Heart and Soul
by HashtagLEH
Summary: Everyone gets their mark when they turn 8 - a circle over their heart with a design on one side for themselves, and one that will appear when they meet their soulmate. Having 6 other soulmates is unheard of; not something to make public. But soulmates are matched for a reason, and when 7 different people finally meet, they can all help in putting the others back together. TSBNCWB
1. Ladies First

**I've always been fascinated with the stories about soulmates (this is my second one on FF, even though it's the first time for this fandom) and when this idea popped into my head, I just HAD to write it down. Hopefully I can keep up with my muse on this one. ;)**

 **Pairings (because FF only allows for 4 characters):**

 **Tony Stark/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanoff/Bruce Banner/Wanda Maximoff/Clint Barton/James "Bucky" Barnes, Thor/Jane**

 **Darcy/Loki (this may just happen in my head and we may not ever see this pairing, but know that it's there)**

 **Pietro Maximoff/Pepper Potts/Phil Coulson**

 **James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Sam Wilson**

 **A few things I changed from canon, first and foremost being that Tony's parents were killed when he was thirteen, and he was in the back seat at the time rather than at school. Second, I changed Clint's back story a bit from canon (in both comics and movies). A lot of stuff is just guesswork, since there wasn't a lot for Clint in the movies and I only know some from the comics because I used Wikipedia. Third, Bucky's birthday is March 1917, and Steve's is July 1920, but I'm pushing Bucky so that they're both in 1920. I just want them to be closer in age, because it makes a lot more sense. ;) Fourth, all of the stuff with Wanda and Pietro happens earlier, so that they get control over their abilities around the same time the Chitauri invade New York. Fifth, because it was kept secret who Iron Man really was, Natasha was never sent in to spy on Tony, but he figured out the new arc reactor core, anyway.**

 **Trigger warning: a woman is killed, and it's discovered after the fact that she was pregnant. It is a minor character in a single scene, but if this disturbs you, turn back now, or skip over Natasha's part.**

...

 **NATASHA**

When Natalia turned eight, she got her soul mark, just as expected and just like everyone else did. But when she saw it, she could only stare at it, visible by the pale moonlight seeping through the window. Because it didn't look like a normal soul mark. Rather than the yin-yang design that would show her own print on one side, with the other side blacked out until she met the other half to her whole, there was just a circle in the center of her chest, completely black, save for the red hourglass shape in the center.

She, along with the instructors in the Red Room, thought that it was because she had no soulmate. The red hourglass was reminiscent of the marking on a black widow spider, so they supposed that she would be the Black Widow in her future years, and her mark illustrated that rather than finding her perfect match.

She was favored over the other girls after that, worked over harder and trained more, and soon enough, she lived up to expectation. She made her first kill in the Room at age twelve, and by age sixteen she had a ledger dripping with red as she made her way around the world, fulfilling her assignments with the cold ruthlessness she'd been trained for since she was a toddler.

It was when she had just turned nineteen that things went slightly…awry.

She was at a gala in Hungary, the arm candy of some politician after she'd spent a couple of weeks at an escort service and she'd succeeded in catching his eye. He'd been the one to front the money for her dress, a gorgeous black number that dipped low in the back and attached in a choker style on her neck, covering her entire front. She thought absently that she might like to keep this dress for the future – it nicely covered the black circle on her chest, but the back had people staring enough that no one would suspect her of being a Russian spy. There was also the added bonus that the type of fabric it was and how it was cut allowed for several secret pockets on the inner seams. Her target that night was a woman named Amalia Novak, a possible turncoat that they wouldn't be waiting to take a chance on.

It was rather easy to lure her away for a few minutes, under the guise of seducing her. There hadn't been definite record of the woman being lesbian, but there had been some whispers and Natalia had figured out that it was at least somewhat true after watching her for a while at the gala. If she had to guess, she would say that she appreciated both sexes, but it was enough that she had noticed her that she didn't care about any more personal details she might pick up from inspecting her longer. She led her into one of the smaller bathrooms, and as soon as the door was locked behind them, she had a needle full of poison jammed into her neck.

As she collapsed to the ground, her eyes were still open, and she was in a panic as she gasped for breath, but Natalia paid this no mind as she rifled through the clutch she'd had with her, on the chance that there might be information about any partners with her. She found her cell phone, and removed the GPS before stashing it in one of her many pockets to go through later.

Upon reaching the bottom however, she felt like she'd been punched in the stomach when her eyes fell on a compilation of pictures in black and white – an ultrasound, with a barely-there fetus growing inside. It was dated for the week before.

Her eyes darted up to Novak's face, and the woman was already dead, her eyes still wide with terror. A terror that suddenly had a new meaning.

Natalia had never felt guilty for killing anyone before – but she'd never killed a child before, either. That she'd killed a baby before they'd even had the chance to grow and be born tore at her like nothing else had ever been able to.

She rested a hand on the woman's stomach, bowing her head and whispering, " _Prosti menya_ *," before she reached up and closed Novak's eyes. The mission was complete, and there was nothing she could do for either of them now.

She rose to her feet, checking herself in the mirror that everything still looked in place, and tried to cut off her emotions so that no one would suspect anything of her when she reappeared at the gala she suddenly wanted to do nothing but escape from. She adjusted the jeweled bobby pins in her upswept hair that had come loose, before stepping around Novak and jamming the bathroom door behind her as she left so that no one would find her for a few more hours.

The guilt was still gnawing at the back of her head, demanding to be examined, so rather than going directly back into the ballroom, she went out a side door to get a few minutes in the cool air. She shivered slightly as snow drifted down on her bare shoulders, but she didn't bother hugging herself to keep warm. It may be minor, but it would be a bit of punishment for what she'd just done.

She leaned against the cold stone wall, resting her head back against it and closing her eyes, trying to get her emotions back under control.

She was an assassin. It's who she was – who she'd been training to be since she was two years old. There would probably be a lot more women she killed that she wouldn't know was pregnant at the time, and she shouldn't feel as sick as that thought made her. She needed to pull herself together – the overseers of the Red Room would not accept this. And while she didn't _live_ in the Red Room anymore after she'd graduated three years ago, she still answered mostly to them and _their_ superiors. If any one of them got a hint that their famed Black Widow was feeling guilty over a job, she'd be swiftly eliminated and replaced without a moment of hesitation. She was valuable, she knew, but she wasn't indispensible.

Still, she couldn't help the single tear that escaped her eye – and she hadn't cried since she was nine, but she felt so sick with what she'd done that she couldn't help it.

She didn't know how long she stood there, progressively getting colder in the snow, but she was forced abruptly back into awareness when a gloved hand touched her shoulder. She barely caught sight of a man a couple of inches taller than her, dressed all in black and with a bow and arrows slung over his shoulder when she was lashing out, knife in her hand and slashing out at him. He dodged quickly, grasping the wrist that held the knife, and she used his grip against him to jerk him forward, rolling to the ground as he sprawled out.

She recognized him, vaguely. She had seen him in files before in the Red Room – the famed archer who never missed a shot, who used to be an assassin for hire and now worked for a division of the United States government. And with him there, in full costume and weapons slung on his back, she had no doubt that he had been sent there to kill her. But she wasn't going to give him that chance.

She wasted no time in taking out her guilt and frustration on the not-so-ex-assassin, trying to get a knife in him somewhere, trying to inflict pain and injury to the best of her abilities. He was quick though, and he had a good eye (his name wasn't ironic, after all), and she could never manage to get more than a couple of good hits in. And after she started going at him on the offensive, he stopped his defensive and avoiding maneuvers and went offensive as well.

They were fairly evenly matched, and the back entrance only had the small sounds of grunts and scuffling as they fought to incapacitate the other. She never allowed him to go for his bow – though that didn't seem to be his intent, anyway – and she had a bit of a difficult time reaching her own weapons, as she wasn't in her normal uniform that allowed everything to be slung about her appendages and around her waist.

He managed to get one of her knives from her, but she didn't consider this of any concern as he clearly wasn't the best at using one. She dodged his blows and avoided the knife – although once he got very close to drawing blood as it slashed across the dress' fabric over her chest.

And then, it was the damn dress that was her downfall in the end. The end of it had gotten ripped when the archer had grabbed it during one of her kicks, and now as she stepped forward to deal him another blow, one of her heels got caught on the stray fabric, causing her to stumble just slightly.

It was enough for the famed Hawkeye, though. Before she could use her stumble in her favor, he grabbed her by the arms and, using the momentum of her fall against her, spun around and pushed them both to the ground. He straddled her, holding her in a way that any fighting she had left was for naught.

And then, still holding her arms, both of them panting heavily from their fight, he froze completely, his gaze fastened to her chest. She had the brief idea that he was staring at her breasts, but this wasn't a look of arousal or fascination or anything else she'd come to expect with men in relation to seeing a woman's body. It was shock – pure and complete shock and disbelief.

A beat, and then Hawkeye pushed himself off of her, releasing her and rising to his feet, still gazing at her. She wasted no time in rising herself, standing defensively in wait of attack, but she didn't honestly think one would be coming. Not when he'd had his chance to kill her, and he hadn't taken it.

"I'm not going to hurt you," the man told her in American accented Russian, clearly understanding her defensive pose and deciding to address it head-on. "You have my mark."

"Your mark?" Natalia repeated, not understanding.

In response, the man reached up, to his chest, and Natalia tensed in expectation of another weapon. But the archer only unsnapped the fastening at the top of his vest, before unzipping it all the way down, and then pushing up the shirt underneath over his chest. Natalia noticed a very nicely muscled abdomen, before her eyes went to what he was directing her to – the black circle in the center of his chest; the soul mark.

Her eyes passed disinterestedly over the purple hexagon in the middle of the circle with a bright red arrow in the middle of it, and locked on the red hourglass above it. An hourglass that looked just like the one on her own chest.

Startled, she moved her dress aside at the slit that had been cut into it – she supposed Hawkeye must have seen it when it slipped while she was on the ground – and she found her own soul mark underneath.

And, sure enough, in the space above her familiar red hourglass with a black background, there was a trapezoid-like shape with a rounded edge – purple background, bright red arrow.

Her mind raced with the implications of this. She knew that soul marks stayed black in the places where a soulmate hadn't been met, and after meeting their own design would become visible. And at this evidence of a soulmate, she realized that she wasn't just the Black Widow – it was just that her own mark had a black background, so it had blended in with the others because she had yet to meet them. And assuming that the marks all around her own were the same size – and there was no reason to think that they wouldn't be – she would have six soulmates. And the archer that had just been sent to kill her was one of them.

She looked back up at said archer – at his face, not his mark, and the man lowered his shirt in response – as her mind continued to poke and prod at this new information, wondering what to do with it.

"I'm not going to hurt you," the man repeated, arms hanging empty and unthreateningly at his sides. "I'm yours."

Years later, after she had defected to the United States and began working with SHIELD alongside the man whose name she learned was Clint Barton, and after she had changed her name to Natasha Romanoff (a bit of a 'fuck you' to her mother country), she would tell him that it had been those words that had convinced her to go with him that night. It was those two simple little words he'd said at the end that told her in an unconscious way that he wasn't going to dismiss her after they'd got out of Hungary, that he only wanted to get to know her and truly _be_ soulmates. If he'd said something like, "You're mine," or "We're soulmates," or "You're my soulmate," she likely would have struck him down where he stood. But it was the unconscious wording that said he was hers that told her he was putting his trust in her, and not expecting a turnaround of the feelings on him. He was literally putting his life in her hands, because, as he had told her in the years following, after he'd seen the mark on her chest that matched his own, he had refused to kill her or even injure her, whether or not she raised a weapon on him after he'd released her.

And it had been those two simple little words that made her think that this might just work – and she had no intention of reporting back to Russia again.

Because some things were just more important than missions.

 **WANDA**

When Pietro and Wanda approached the last minutes before they turned eight, they had sat in the front room with their parents, Wanda with a loose tank top and Pietro shirtless as they eagerly anticipated the appearance of their soul marks. Their parents sat on the small couch next to each other, holding hands with fond smiles, and Wanda remembered the perfect matches on their chests – the yin-yang symbols that illustrated for all to see that those two were truly meant to be. She was excited to see her own soul mark, to see how she would be painted to the outside world. She was excited to share the same love that her parents did with that one special person that would be her all. She could hardly wait till she met her soulmate and she had someone who would love her completely and unreservedly.

In following years, she tried hard to remember those feelings of excitement, because she knew in her heart that even though others said that it was a bad thing, she knew that having six soulmates couldn't be _too_ awful. Right? Because if it was, surely they wouldn't exist. But still her parents had told her that it was lucky she was a girl, because wearing clothes to cover her chest wasn't as odd as it would be for a young boy.

And so she covered her chest, never letting anyone see the red hexagon in the middle of a pool of black right over her heart. She was glad for the Gemini symbol inside of it, because it showed how important it was to her to have Pietro as her twin, and the orange flames inside the symbol were interesting…but she could never tell her friends about it, because that would just be _asking_ for the scorn of her peers and anyone else they told about it.

Triads were uncommon but not unheard of, and a three-way marriage between soulmates had been made legal in Sokovia a year after she was born, so there had been plenty of time for people to get used to the idea then. Pietro was lucky, she thought, because he didn't have to worry about people seeing the triple yin-yang design on his chest – it was practically normal by now. Only the serious traditionalists would have issue with it.

But her – _six_ soulmates? It was unheard of. No one she had met and asked had ever heard of soulmates bigger than the rare foursome, let alone a group of seven.

There were some liberals, of course, who cried that a group of soulmates should be allowed and not scorned by the general populace. Wanda agreed with them, because was it _her_ fault that the stars had placed her with six others? Love was love, she decided (with Pietro's supportive agreement), and if she was deserving of six others to love and be loved in return, then _so be it_.

And then the bombs came.

As she and Pietro lied trapped under the bed for two days, staring at the missile that had miraculously not gone off, _Stark Industries_ in white lettering on its side, she could only think that she was never going to meet her soulmates, and Pietro would never meet his. Because their parents were dead across the room, and she was certain that the missile would go off at any moment, and she could only picture six other people, trapezoids on their chests never lightening to the bright red that was her mark – instead turning a dull, depressing, telling grey the moment that missile exploded in front of their faces.

And as she stared at the white lettering – the name that screamed to all who was responsible for this – she felt the hate boil up in her at the one responsible for making the group of seven soulmates be six forever; the one who would make their bond broken and incomplete for the rest of the others' lives. The deaths of her parents, the impending deaths of her and her brother, and the destruction of so many towns over Sokovia – they all paled in comparison to her feelings for making it impossible for all seven of them to be together one day.

This hatred didn't diminish or die down after they'd been freed and led to safety – it only festered, growing stronger as they entered their teen years. And Pietro agreed with her, because his triad had almost become a couple, and he was definitely not okay with that. They grieved for their parents of course, and they certainly blamed Tony Stark for their deaths, but their quest for revenge came from their outrage at almost being separated from their soulmates.

And then came the day of reckoning.

It had been a long year of experimentation with various chemicals in their bodies, and it was nothing short of torture as their bodies accepted the changes. They would have escaped from the HYDRA base long ago were it not for their deep-seated need to destroy Stark. Their anger towards him was what drove them both through the endless weeks of fire racing through their veins, of electricity through their brains, and of the feeling of all the bones breaking in their bodies as they were unable to breathe while undergoing the experiments.

Then their systems had finally settled down, finally accepting one of the chemicals and giving them their powers. Pietro gained the ability to move faster than the eye could follow, while Wanda could move and destroy with her mind, as well as seeing into the minds of others and placing images there. It was enough for the scientists, and thus began their training in gaining control over their powers. It wasn't as painful as the experiments had been, but it had been difficult nonetheless as they continually pushed themselves to the point of exhaustion to satisfy the ones training them.

And, thirteen months after the experiments started and five months after they gained their powers, Wanda walked alone from the training room to go back to the bedroom that felt more like a cell. She wasn't comfortable with all of the gun-toting guards around them that shoved them or ignored them like they were unimportant, and she knew that Pietro was uneasy with it as well, but it was the only way they had seen becoming able to destroy Stark. Only someone with superhuman abilities could go against him, and they'd jumped at this chance.

As she walked across a metal catwalk, a couple of guards came from the opposite direction, walking together and taking up the whole width of the bridge, clearly expecting her to be the one to move. She stepped quickly aside, grabbing the nearest thing for support, and they brushed past her uncaringly.

Even after they'd passed, however, Wanda remained still in her position, feeling decidedly different. It was…odd. And then she realized that there was a slight warmth between her breasts, only noticeable because she'd been slightly chilled moments before. Looking down in bewilderment, she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse, and gazed down at her soul mark, where the warmth originated from.

Over her hexagonal mark, another mark had appeared. It was light blue, so pale it was almost white, with an upside-down triangle in darker blue taking its center. In the middle of the blue outline of the triangle, it was red – almost the same color of red as her own mark.

She could only gaze at it in confusion. It hadn't been there this morning, when she'd gotten dressed, and she hadn't met anyone new in weeks. Even the guards that had passed her had been there for months.

But…

Her eyes caught on the thing she'd grabbed for support – it was one of Stark's weapons, with his name emblazoned like a sign on the side in white.

She knew that sometimes people's marks could appear if they touched the right name, or something that their soulmate had a connection to – and this one had both. And she suddenly knew with utter certainty who her first soulmate was. She couldn't say what made her so certain, but she just _knew_.

Mind racing, she hurried back to her room, waiting for Pietro to show up. She had to talk to him, because this new development…it definitely changed some things.

...

 ***Prosti menya - "I'm sorry"**


	2. Archery, Inventing, and Science

**CLINT**

Clint had known that he had soulmates out there – the markings on his chest told him so clear enough – but he'd never cared too much to look for them. His childhood had been taken from him before he could even walk, so the forced growing up he had to do from so young an age had caused him to take a step back and really ask himself if he wanted to risk soulmates. After a bit of pondering when he was twelve and he'd been accused of crimes he hadn't committed, he'd decided that soulmates took a back seat to the rest of his life.

Besides, he'd thought, no one would really care to have a circus-performer-turned-assassin-for-hire-turned-SHIELD-agent-archer as a part of the apparent group of seven soulmates. They'd have the others, and he knew he wasn't anything special, so why even bother trying? Sure, it might be nice to have just one soulmate, but he wasn't going to cry over not having them. He had more important things to concern himself with.

But then he had the mission in Hungary.

It had been a simple execute-and-run mission, even if the famed Black Widow was the target. He knew he was a good shot – after all, SHIELD wouldn't want him if he was anything except the best – and he knew she was there on a different mission, so he was certain she wouldn't be looking for any assassins on her own tail. Relatively certain, anyway.

He'd seen her arrive with a faceless politician, looking as gorgeous as her file suggested. He watched her through binoculars from the building next door – he would wait for her to leave the gala before taking the shot. Beforehand, there was too much security around, and while normally he wouldn't mind the added risk because he was certain he could get away, this time it was the Black Widow as his target, and that was enough risk right there already. He could bide his time – if there was one thing being a sniper had taught him, it was patience. He was not going to jump the gun on this one – and he chuckled at the unintended pun.

He had been watching the doors for some time, having come up on top of the roof a half hour after the party had started, when he saw movement at one of the side exits. He peered down, and saw that it was his target, and he couldn't help smiling to himself at how easy this would be. No one was around, the gala in full swing, and the snow had started up minutes before, meaning that if it picked up as expected, her body may even be hidden by it before the party ended.

He picked up his bow, stringing an arrow through it and pointing it down at the gorgeous young woman. He pulled it back, preparing to shoot –

And then he stopped. Years later, he would never be able to explain what it was that stayed his hand, caused him to lower the deadly weapon without firing. Perhaps it was the fact that he'd just noticed her crying, the tear trailing down her cheek sparkling in the moonlight. Perhaps it was just his sudden realization of how young she really was – barely nineteen, if her files were correct in their estimate. Perhaps it was that he could see grief and regret in her expression, and it was like looking into a mirror, seeing the same guilt that he felt now at his past assassinations.

He didn't know why he climbed off of the building and approached her – it was suicide, really, because even if he felt some empathy with her, she had absolutely no reason not to eradicate him as soon as she recognized him – and it wouldn't be hard, with the bow and quiver of arrows still on his back.

And, as expected, as soon as he'd touched her arm, she was spinning on him, and he was locked in a furious battle to subdue the other.

As he fought, he cursed himself mentally at letting his guard down, at getting this close to her, because he knew she was skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and they were evenly matched, so they would have to keep going until one of them lost their stamina and the other killed them. Because that was clearly what the Widow intended to do – she was holding nothing back, and he could only try to keep her occupied enough that she was unable to get inside her dress where more of her weapons undoubtedly were. If she reached any of her Widow's Bites, he would have no chance.

The fighting did serve one purpose, though – it reminded him that he should not underestimate someone just because they looked guilty, because guilt didn't always stop someone from killing further. And when that realization was returned to him while he dodged her blade and fists as best he could, he firmed his resolve to complete his mission, and to kill her.

But then, when he finally got his chance, and he was holding her down to the snow-covered ground, his eyes caught on her chest. Somewhere in the melee, he had managed to grab her knife and slash open the front of her dress, and the force of her fall had caused the fabric to fall open, revealing the pale chest underneath – and below that, the soul mark that had a portion matching his own hexagonal mark.

After a moment where he could only stare at the mark in shock, because the Black Widow is one of my soulmates, he released her and rose to his feet. She rose quickly and smoothly after him, standing defensively in front of him. But he wasn't going to kill her – he wasn't even going to hurt her. Because he suddenly felt differently about soul marks than he had just an hour beforehand. He'd met one of them, and already he could feel the warm glow of happiness at part of his soul being joined to hers.

He hadn't spoken Russian in a few years, focusing more on brushing up on his Hungarian for this mission (just in case), but he thought that perhaps she would feel more comfortable if he spoke in her native tongue, so he tried to remember how to form the words he needed.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, trying to reassure her. Hoping she would at least hear him out, he continued explaining, "You have my mark."

"Your mark?" the Widow repeated, not looking like she had any clue what he was talking about.

So, he reached up to unsnap and then unzip his vest, before pushing the shirt underneath up to reveal the circular soul mark. He saw the moment she recognized her own soul mark, the look of startled bewilderment before she looked down, moving her dress aside to see her own soul mark. He had noticed the red hourglass centered in black on her chest, and curiously thought how it suited her, what with her being the Black Widow. He kept his gaze on her while she seemed to realize the implications of their matching marks, and didn't move, not wanting to spook her into running.

She looked back up at him, and he was struck with the realization that her green eyes, while not the color of emeralds, were breathtaking. Even with a face wet with snow, with hair falling out and several rips in her gown, she looked gorgeous, and he was not ever going to do anything to hurt her.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he repeated, hoping that some of the wariness could disappear from her face, because even if she didn't want to go to the U.S., if she wanted to continue as a Russian spy/assassin, he was going to let her go. If need be, he would lie to SHIELD about what had happened – he would lead them astray, even shoot himself in the leg to explain how she got away from him. But it was all her choice.

"I'm yours," he iterated, hoping that she would see how he was completely in her hands from this point.

And, amazingly, it worked. She didn't want to go back to Russia after all, and when he went to the jet waiting for him, the SHIELD agents were stunned at the redheaded assassin walking freely alongside him. It was clear she needed no protecting, but he gave it anyway, keeping the agents from handcuffing her or putting her in a holding cell, telling them that he was taking responsibility for her from here on out.

It was difficult, at first, getting Fury to agree with him, and there were weeks of red tape and various other issues with the Black Widow walking freely about SHIELD headquarters, but they managed to pull through it. She wasn't shy by any means, but sometimes her silent appearance made agents jittery and avoid her. He dismissed it, and any time someone got too loud in their discontent with her presence there, he would loudly and firmly declare that she wasn't going anywhere, that she was on their side now, that he didn't want to hear anything negative said about her, and that they'd better get used to it.

And there were times when, in the dead of night, he would awaken to find her lying next to him in bed. He would see the crinkle between her eyebrows as she slept, telling him that it was a night of bad dreams, and he would pull her close, because he understood. She was a private person, and always had been, but she was slowly putting her trust in him, and it meant more than he could say that she trusted him enough to come sleep next to him on a bad night. And even though more often than not, he would awaken in the morning with the bed empty, and Natasha would act like nothing had happened throughout the day, it was enough so far.

Because they were only just beginning.

* * *

 **TONY**

When Tony was little, Jarvis would always tell him with enthusiasm of the joys of having a soulmate. He was always eager to hear the stories that Jarvis would share with him, and he looked forward to having a soulmate, because then he would have someone who would really love him. His parents didn't love him, he knew that – he was just an heir, not a son. And Jarvis loved him, but he knew that Jarvis was just his butler, and if he was fired he'd never be seen again. So he wasn't really Jarvis' family. That was okay though, because he liked Jarvis, and he knew he would havesome time with him, and when he was older he would have a soulmate just for him.

Jarvis had a soulmate. Her name was Grace, and she was just as nice as Jarvis, even if Tony didn't see her as much as he did the blond man. She made really yummy oatmeal raisin cookies, and if she had the time, she would share with him stories of soulmates and her perspective of how she and Jarvis had met, and he grew to love her just as much as the closest father figure he had.

On the night he turned eight, his father was in Austria with his mother, and Jarvis and Grace stayed awake with him to wait until the soul mark would appear on his chest. Grace made oatmeal raisin cookies in the kitchen while he sat on the counter next to her, glancing at the clock on the microwave about every twenty seconds. Jarvis simply sat in the chair next to the counter, making conversation, and chuckling fondly every time Tony almost fell off the counter in his excitement.

Then, at midnight, when it finally appeared on his chest like ink rising to the surface of the water, he couldn't help the grin that appeared on his face, even though he didn't understand why his mark looked so different from everyone else he knew.

After congratulating him on receiving the mark, Grace and Jarvis had seriously informed him that it would be best if he didn't show anyone the mark. He discovered that the hexagon meant that six more shapes would be appearing around it, and while he thought it was odd that he would be in a group of seven people, wondering if they even made beds big enough for seven people, he agreed readily to what the other two said. It would be a while before he would understand exactly what sort of prejudice and persecution anyone in a relationship bigger than a triad would face.

When he was thirteen, after his parents died in the car crash and he got away with nothing more than a sprained wrist and a concussion, he stared down at the new mark on his chest in confusion. He hadn't met anyone new – he knew that.

And yet… He had a vague recollection, of a motorcycle coming up behind the car after they'd crashed, of blue eyes staring blankly, unseeingly into his. He'd thought it was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by the crash and the knock to his head. But perhaps it had been real. But if that was true, then his parents' deaths weren't an accident, and he couldn't handle that, so he dismissed the memory as imagination and moved on, wondering who the person whose mark was a yellow background with a red star in its center.

And then, after Afghanistan, he never saw the mark again. The arc reactor that was keeping him alive covered all record of him ever having the soul mark, even though that was impossible because everyone had one, even if one side appeared the dull grey that showed the other half was dead when a person got it at eight. But there was nothing he could do about it, and not having the soul mark on his chest made him feel empty – emptier than when Stane ripped the arc reactor right out of his chest and left him to die.

But he dealt with it. Because it only confirmed that the Merchant of Death didn't have a soul, because if he did then he would have soulmates. So he ignored the pang he got whenever he heard a story of soulmates meeting, or when he saw a complete soul mark on someone's chest that told all that they had their soulmate and both of them were alive and together. It's true that the arc reactor looked a bit like his soul mark looked before it had been cut away, but that was just coincidence. Really. Besides, the red in the center of the triangle wasn't a part of his arc reactor – the reactor was all blue.

And when the option came to reveal himself to the world as Iron Man, or tell everyone it was a bodyguard, he chose the latter. Because no one wanted the Merchant of Death as their hero. No one wanted the soulless man – the man whose soul mark had been literally cut out of him – as their hero. No one would believe that Tony Stark – genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist – could or would save anyone, be a hero. And he insisted he was fine with that – it was better this way. The only people alive who knew who he was were Pepper, Rhodey, and Agent Coulson – and because he'd chosen the bodyguard story, Coulson had told him that it was unnecessary for anyone save his boss to know who he was. And Coulson could tell Eyepatch whatever the hell he wanted, because his opinion meant nothing to him, and he knew that there was no reason for either of the SHIELD agents to reveal who he was to someone else.

And then the Avengers were formed.

* * *

 **BRUCE**

When Bruce was young, he loved science. It was something that made sense, but it changed enough that it kept his attention. He loved science because science was always making new discoveries that improved on old knowledge. When he was little, and there was the day at school where everyone dressed up as what they wanted to be when they grew up, he always donned the white lab coat his mom had gotten him one Christmas, because he was going to be a scientist. He thought it so fascinating how a couple of combinations of different chemicals could cause an explosion, or how DNA had to split just so for there to be no errors that would cause sickness in the body.

When he was eight, and the soul mark appeared on his chest, he was so happy that his mark was green like chemicals, with bubbles floating around inside. He thought it was interesting how a couple of bubbles were red, and he was glad that his mark seemed to show his love for science. He wanted to be a scientist all the more, and see if there were any chemicals that were green but had some red bubbles in it.

Of course, then he made the mistake of showing his father the soul mark the next day, and what had once been dismissiveness and neglect quickly escalated into physical abuse that left his ribs perpetually sore and sometimes made it difficult to go to school. What had once been a dismissal towards him because he was so intelligent soon became assault for the "freak with too many 'soulmates'".

He escaped his house as soon as he could, because he knew he wouldn't live long with his father, who had gotten worse after his mom died when he was fifteen. He pushed aside any want for soulmates, and hid his soulmate mark from everyone. He pursued science in his career, just as he'd always dreamed, and that's where things went downhill.

Later, he understood exactly why there were red bubbles in his mark. Red was the color for death, after all, and as the Other Guy – or the Hulk, as the media called it – he had inadvertently killed a lot of people.

He hid away in India, and he was safe for several months, away from the U.S. government and General Ross in particular, until one night a little girl led him to the edge of town, and he met a beautiful woman with red hair, and something…clicked.

That was the night he finally got his first soulmate mark, and it was that that convinced him to come with her for the Avengers initiative.

 **...**

 **I feel like I gave Bruce the short end of the stick, because his back story was way shorter than anyone else I wrote out. But I think that with more, it would just become repetitive with the rest and you'd get bored, so I'll leave it as-is.**  
 **Next chapter we get Steve and Bucky! Thanks for reading!**


	3. War

**STEVE**

Steve woke up the morning of his eighth birthday, and the first thing he did was look down at the soul mark that had appeared overnight. His mother had told him that he needed to go to sleep, because he had been sick the past week and needed to regain his energy, so he hadn't seen it at midnight like his friend Bucky had four months before.

And then, he could only stare in shock, because where he'd expected to get the normal yin-yang pattern, he had the same one that Bucky had. The hexagon in the middle, with six other slots around it. And more than that, he saw that the design in the hexagon – the one that clearly represented him – was the same one that had been above Bucky's. The white star in the center, surrounded by blue, and then the red stripes at the top and the bottom. If his birthday being on the Fourth of July had told him nothing, this one clearly showed him that he was destined for patriotism and loyalty to the United States. And then, in the shape above his personal mark, was Bucky's mark – the golden yellow background, with a red star in the center. And even though he was only eight, he was very smart, and he quickly pieced together that he and Bucky were each others' soulmates – or part of a group of soulmates with each other, apparently.

He remembered the day he'd met Bucky – less than a year before, on the first day of school, when some other boys had beat him up, and Bucky had chased them away. Steve had been resentful at first, thinking that the bigger boy thought him weak and incapable, but Bucky had only been kind, and they'd grown to be best friends in no time at all. Seeing the soul mark now that matched Bucky's, he supposed that it was because they were soulmates, so it would make sense that they would click automatically.

He knew that he shouldn't go telling people he had six other soulmates, though – that was just _asking_ to get beat up. Even Bucky was hiding his own mark, and he was big. Only Steve and his mom and Bucky's immediate family knew how many soulmates Bucky had, and Steve knew how important it was to keep it quiet. Anyone more than a couple would just be persecuted, though some people were beginning to cry out for triads to have the same rights as couples as they grew more common.

At least there wasn't an issue of same-sex couples, his mother told him later. _That_ was something that had been legal since the 1600s. The Barnes and Rogers families had come together after Steve's mark had shown up with Bucky's, and they had agreed that Steve and Bucky would pretend that they were each others' soulmates, and no one else's – at least for the time being. They didn't know what would happen if and when they met any of the other five, but for now it was easier and safer to pretend that Steve and Bucky were just a couple, rather than part of a group of seven.

It was rather easy to be Bucky's soulmate, Steve thought frequently in the coming years. With the confirmation on their chests that they would be together forever, there was no confusion with other people and other girls – they knew that the other would be with them always. They grew ever closer in the following years, and Bucky defended Steve more fiercely from bullies as time went on, and it only caused Steve's love and admiration for him to grow. They shared their first kiss when they were twelve, giggling a bit the whole time in excitement as much as awkwardness, not knowing exactly what they were doing but knowing that it felt _right_.

And then the war came, and Bucky was enlisting, and no matter how hard Steve tried, he couldn't join, because of his stupid health problems, but his soul mark told him that he _needed_ to serve his country, and he wanted to join Bucky, but he couldn't because he was _too sick_.

And then Bucky went to England, and he got the serum, and everything moved in a whirlwind until he found out that the 107th had been captured, and he could _finally_ do something meaningful for his country, but he didn't care because he just wanted _Bucky_. He wanted Bucky to be safe, and he didn't know if he would've been so adamant to rescue the troops if there hadn't been the chance that Bucky was there, too.

But they were safe, even though Bucky had been hurt, and they were okay, and they went back to the General, and everything was okay when they were taking down the HYDRA bases around the continent, and this was it, this was _real_. He was living up to the mark on his chest – he was serving his country, and he was doing good, and he was _proud_.

And then none of it mattered, because Bucky was gone – he'd fallen off a train, and Steve could only scream and scream because he was gone and he wasn't coming back, and a portion of his soul had fallen off the train with his very best friend and lover.

He didn't look at his soul mark after that – he couldn't bear to see the spot where Bucky's colors of red and yellow would turn a dull grey, where it would illustrate for all to see that Bucky was gone forever.

Afterward, on the plane, he didn't mind dying, because he hadn't met the other five whose marks were on his chest, and he couldn't imagine loving anyone else the way he'd loved Bucky, and he just wanted to stop _hurting_.

What felt like hours later, like he'd just taken a nap, he was waking up in a new place, and it was the 21st century, and he hadn't slept for just a few hours but seventy _years_.

And he saw the mark on accident once while he was getting dressed, and he could only look at it blankly, because it wasn't a dull grey all over – he could still see the red star there, and the yellow behind it, like it was being seen through fog. He supposed it must be because he had basically been reborn, and this was his second life, and he wasn't going to see Bucky again in this life – not until he died.

He studiously ignored the days when it would lighten, when it looked as it did when they lived together in Brooklyn, because it hurt too much to consider the impossible idea that somehow, by some _miracle_ , his best friend had lived.

And then, with the disappearance of the Tesseract, he had a whole new load of problems to worry about than a defective soul mark on his chest that just wouldn't turn grey.

 **BUCKY**

The Winter Soldier had no use for soul marks. In the few times he saw it when he changed himself rather than his handlers doing it while he was unconscious, he thought it a curious marking but had nothing to associate it with. It was something his owners had deemed unimportant for him to know, so the knowledge of such markings was removed from him.

But sometimes, when he looked at it, he would get a lost and confused look, and seeing the red, white, and blue design would make him remember a face. He would remember a small, waifish boy he felt protective over, as well as the same face on a bigger body – a body taller than him and stronger than him, but still the same person. And it was confusing, because he was the Soldier, and he didn't feel protective for _anyone_. He protected his owners and his handlers, but that's what he was made for. He didn't have… _feelings_ for anyone.

But a small voice popped up in the back of the Soldier's mind sometimes, telling him this was a lie, and he would get a brief flash of himself kissing the blond man, of holding him close in his arms like it would protect him from the world – but then his handlers would return, and he couldn't help asking about the man, even though something told him he'd asked these things before, and another man would hold out a mouth guard, and in instinct, knowing he would need it and knowing he would be unable to escape, he took it and bit down on it, and all he knew was _painsomuchpainpleasemakeitstop_ , and when he awoke he would remember nothing else.

Until one day, when he awoke, he knew something was different. Because even though he didn't remember the mark until he saw it, he knew with certainty that the red hourglass surrounded by a pool of black had never been there before. And he knew that his handlers wouldn't take kindly to more questions, let alone the knowledge of another mark showing up. Not after the last time – _what happened last time?_ – when he asked about the blue triangle with red inside.

So he said nothing about it, being forced to push it to the back of his mind as he was sent out on more missions, because even though something told him these marks were important, his missions took precedence. Nothing would stand in the way of what he was meant to do.

Until one day, something – or some _one_ – did.

He'd shot a black man with an eye patch from the apartment building across from his, and there was a familiar-looking man chasing after him moments later. He wasn't his mission, so he was not going to kill him, because that was not his job, but something niggled at him that he wouldn't have, anyway.

He caught the shield that was thrown at him with ease, and he had to pause and stare at that face – _that achingly familiar face_ – and then quick flashes of memory went through his head. Memories of kisses, of lying in bed talking quietly in the dead of night, of laughing together while making a simple dinner, of patching up the smaller boy – _didn't he used to be so much smaller?_ – after he'd been beaten up in an alley, of holding each other for comfort, of tracing each others' soul marks on their chests while wondering aloud to each other who the other five were and what they were doing, of loving the blond man standing in front of him.

And then the memories slipped away as quick as they'd appeared, like water through a sieve, and he was only left with the feelings that had accompanied the memories. And he couldn't handle it, so he threw the shield back to the man with force, and disappeared while he was distracted.

He was confused with what he was feeling, and lost, and he began to wonder again (though he didn't remember the other times he'd doubted) what exactly his purpose was.

Then they were sending him out on another mission, to kill the blond man and the redheaded woman – _don't I know her?_ – and he agreed, and he was trying to kill them _even though it felt so wrong_ , and they were fighting back –

And then his mask came off, and he turned, and he saw the recognition on the blond man's face, and it only confirmed what he'd begun to doubt –

"Bucky?"

"Who the hell is Bucky?" he returned, because he didn't remember a Bucky, even though it felt familiar, and he was just the Soldier, the Asset, he had no name because he only had one purpose but was that really the right purpose?

But he followed his orders, and raised his gun, but then he was knocked over by someone else flying behind him, and then something shot in his direction and exploded, and he knew he had to get out of there and escape.

And then back in the chair, while the man worked on repairing the arm that the blond man had damaged in the fight, more memories filtered back. It was like that word – _Bucky_ – had turned on the faucet to his memories.

He remembered a little boy, a boy who looked like he was six for how small he was but somehow knowing he was eight. He remembered how the boy had showed him the circle on his chest that had appeared in the night, all black save for two shapes – a hexagon with such a patriotic U.S. theme, and the shape above it that matched the design on his own chest.

He remembered kissing the boy under the slide at the park, both of them giggling with teenage awkwardness as they held hands.

He remembered a quiet night, lying in bed while the smaller boy slept, both of them naked and limbs entwined together under the covers while car lights flashed over the window, dimly illuminating the room.

He remembered wearing a uniform – army, his mind whispered – and scaring off an older man punching the boy he loved in an alley.

He remembered waking up in a room with the man – so much bigger than before – trying to wake him up and get him to follow him out.

He remembered falling off a train, with the blond man screaming out to him in a broken voice while he tried reaching out to catch him and then _so much cold_.

He remembered waking up with a metal arm, an arm that wasn't real but worked normally and was perfect for squeezing the guy's throat because _I'm not safe here needtogetawayescapefindSteve_.

Back in the present, he shot up in his chair, instinctively lashing out at the ones there because even though he didn't understand and his mind was so broken up and disjointed, he knew that the ones there only wanted to use him and hurt him and he needed to _getawayescapefindSteve_.

He had to stop himself moments later, because the guards were pointing guns at him and he knew that without weapons he was no match, so he sat there and let his mind replay and filter the memories through his head, trying to make sense of them even though he knew it was impossible.

"Mission report," he heard a voice demand distantly, but he couldn't speak, because he didn't understand and nothing was fitting together in his mind. It was like a pile of puzzle pieces but they were all wrong and didn't even belong in the same puzzle because the Winter Soldier wasn't Bucky (and wasn't _he_ Bucky?) but he couldn't be because he was the Winter Soldier but Bucky felt right and who was he?

"Mission report," the voice said again, more firmly this time, and then the man backhanded him across the face, but he was grateful for it because it shook some of the pieces into place and _he's had so much worse_.

He remembers the pain of electricity flowing through his brain, remembers how he could only have a mouth guard for relief as he was held down with solid metal around his arms, remembers how after that he wasn't Bucky he was just _Soldier_.

So he pushes his confusion to the back of his mind, allows the Soldier to come forward, and he reports. Because he doesn't want to forget Bucky again.

And he wants to help this blond man, because he seems _good_ , and maybe he can explain what the hell is going on in his head. Maybe he can explain what's real and what's not. Maybe he can fit the puzzle pieces back together.

As he lets the Soldier direct his body, following orders as trained, he, Bucky - or the part that's Bucky - only repeats the few words that make sense at the moment. He repeats them like a mantra in his head, because he _can't forget this time_.

 _Not safe here. Need to get away. Escape. Find Steve._

 **...**

 **I considered not having Bucky's part of this soul mark story in here yet, because I will be going through some of the happenings in the Avengers, but then I figured it would flow better with the story? Maybe? I don't know. Bucky will be back, but it will be after some Avengers stuff, and after we see what happens with Wanda and Pietro (which will also be after Avengers stuff). Oh, well. Sorry if Bucky's part and the end of Steve's part is a bit disjointed – I was trying to show how confused they are, especially on Bucky's part. That's why there are so many run-on sentences that make my inner Grammar Nazi scream, but oh well.**

 **Hope you enjoyed – please leave me feedback, and I'll get the next chapter up soon! Thanks for reading!**


	4. Paranoid

Natasha opened her eyes, awake the moment her alarm went off. She rolled over in bed, staring at Clint's side of the bed. It was empty, and as childish and naïve as it was, she had hoped that his being taken by Loki was all a dream.

Sighing, she sat upright, rubbing her eyes and just sitting there for a moment. She missed him. She had never really believed in soulmates being someone's "one true love" before, and while she was still skeptical of the ideas that scientists had thrown around for centuries, she _did_ love Clint, as much as she considered herself able to love. And although she had the mark on her that could only belong to the Winter Soldier, she had only ever _met_ Clint, and so it was to him that all of her love was directed to.

 _I wonder if the other four are assassins as well,_ she mused, climbing out of bed and going to her closet. It was certainly odd that the three of them so far all had the same profession – or had been, at one point. She only wished she knew what the Winter Soldier looked like, and that he had stayed long enough for her to talk to him. She had told Clint as soon as she'd got back from the mission (with a nice souvenir in her side), and amazingly, he had come across the metal-armed assassin a few missions later. He had tried getting to him and talking to him as well, but the Winter Soldier was very skilled at getting away, and hadn't spoken a word to Clint.

 _I can't focus on that right now,_ she scolded herself a moment later as she slipped on her uniform when she realized where her thoughts had wandered.

Fury had instructed her that she was needed in the Middle East – to go and get the 'Big Guy' and bring him back to SHIELD. The Hulk. Now _that_ was a dangerous mission, and she couldn't afford to be distracted for this one. She'd had her night off – by Fury's orders, not her own decision – so that she could sleep before taking off in the jet to get to the doctor.

 _Time to go,_ she thought, checking her watch. _Time to focus, or getting Clint back will be nothing but a pipe dream._

…

"I'm here on behalf of SHIELD."

SHIELD. The one government agency who pretended that they weren't trying to capture him for experimentation or eternal solitude in some prison cell under the sea. He hadn't thought they'd be able to find him.

"SHIELD," Bruce repeated, letting none of his thoughts show on his face. He knew the woman – the agent – would be able to find whatever she needed there. "How did they find me?"

"They never lost you," Agent Romanoff said plainly, calmly. "They've kept their distance – even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent."

 _Am I supposed to feel grateful?_ He wondered. Sure, SHIELD might not be as bad as the other government agencies after him, but…well, perhaps he _should_ feel a bit grateful, then. But why would SHIELD do such a thing, if they wanted him anyway?

"Why?" he said bluntly.

"Nick Fury seems to trust you," Romanoff said, and he could practically see the attitude shift to something more formal, more official, with her next words. "But now we need you to come in."

"What if I say no?" he countered immediately, feeling a bit cornered under her stare. She may be gorgeous, he acknowledged, but predators always recognized each other, and he could see plainly that she was not someone he wanted to underestimate.

"Then I'll _persuade_ you," Romanoff said with a little smile, and Bruce wasn't sure how he was supposed to interpret that, so he dismissed it with another question.

"And what if… _the Other Guy_ says no?"

"You've been more than a year without an incident," Romanoff said with a slightly curved brow that seemed to _dare_ him to let the Other Guy out. "I don't think you want to break that streak."

"I don't always get what I want," Bruce replied, reminding her of the one thing that government agents seemed to forget the most – that he didn't always have control over the Beast, and as soon as he changed they were basically _all_ doomed.

He could practically see the gears shift in Romanoff's mind again as she pulled out a cell phone from her pocket. "Doctor, we're facing a potential global catastrophe."

Bruce snorted. "Well, those I _actively_ try to avoid." Global catastrophe? And it was apparently a good idea to bring in someone who could snap and do even _further_ damage?

"This is the Tesseract," Romanoff said, sliding the phone forward on the table to show him a picture of a glowing blue cube. "It has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."

"What does Fury want me to do – swallow it?" Bruce said sarcastically, not understanding why he would be important in something like this.

"He wants you to find it," she corrected. "It's been taken. It emits a gamma signature that's too weak for us to trace. There's no one that know gamma radiation like you do. If there was"—she leaned back in her chair—"That's where I'd be."

"So Fury _isn't_ after the monster?" Bruce said disbelievingly. _No one_ wasn't after the monster after finding out who he was.

"Not that I know of," Romanoff answered casually.

"And he tells you everything." It was a statement more than a question, because he already knew the answer. Someone with higher clearance wouldn't be on the lowly mission to track down the Hulk in Calcutta – it would be someone either good at escape or expendable. Bruce still wasn't sure which one it was for her, but he was leaning towards the former option.

"No," Romanoff answered his earlier question easily. "But talk to Fury – he needs you on this."

Bruce shook his head, not believing her, Fury, or the entirety of SHIELD. "He needs me in a cage."

"Nobody's going to put you in a cage…"

"STOP LYING TO ME!"

It had been an impulsive idea, one that would see how she would react as he yelled and slapped his hands down on the table, leaning in close to her in a clearly threatening manner. He had control of the beast, and wasn't even really that angry, more irritated than anything else, but he was interested to see how quickly she moved, standing up and pointing a gun in his face. He smiled, a bit apologetically as he remembered that if she actually shot him the Other Guy would break free and she'd be dead, along with several people in the city. He straightened and put his hands up a bit.

"I'm sorry, that was mean," he confessed, and decided to explain. "I just wanted to see what you'd do." Her gun was still in his face, her expression tense as she stared at him. "Why don't we do this the easy way, where you don't use that"—he motioned slightly to the gun—"and the Other Guy doesn't make a mess? Okay? Natasha?" He used her first name on purpose, hopefully to show that he was still aware enough to remember her name, and therefore not an immediate threat. He was certain she would notice that, and he saw the look of realization in her eyes that confirmed his estimate of her capabilities.

Slowly, she lowered her gun, and put a hand to her ear. He was unsurprised when she said simply, "Stand down. We're good here." He'd never believed it was just the two of them anyway – that'd be pure stupidity on her part, and he hadn't thought since she'd appeared that she was stupid.

"Just you and me, huh?" he said mildly.

Romanoff sat back down at the table, putting the gun next to her this time rather than back where it had been hidden under the table before. Bruce idly wondered how many weapons were stashed in secret places around the shack.

"I'm sure Fury has his own game he's playing at this point," she admitted, leaning back in her chair again as though nothing had just happened. "He's always played his cards close to his chest and comes up with surprise cards along the way. But I do believe that he does need you for your knowledge in gamma radiation."

"I suppose you expect me to believe you now?" Bruce said dryly, leaning against the support beam in the center of the room.

Romanoff scoffed a bit. "You didn't believe me before either, Dr. Banner."

"And I don't now," Bruce said freely. "So unless you want to provoke the Other Guy, you can try your 'persuading' tactics or just leave. I'm not risking another incident in the middle of wherever SHIELD would bring me."

Romanoff tilted her head, quiet for a moment as she considered him. "I just came back from Russia," she said, and the sudden change of subject made him raise an eyebrow curiously, wondering where she was going with this. "It's cold this time of year, and I'm a native of the country, so it takes a fairly quick amount of time for my body to acclimate to the cold. That basically means that my blood will run a couple degrees cooler until I go to a warmer climate – one like this one. Right now my blood runs at 95.4 degrees Fahrenheit."

"That's very interesting, but is that supposed to mean something to me?" Bruce questioned.

"When soul marks appear, did you know that they heat to 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit? Most people don't know that, because most people's blood runs at 98.7 degrees. They think that it just appears in their skin when they meet their significant other. Only people with a lower core body temperature would be able to feel it, and only if they already know what to look for."

Bruce was no idiot. He understood what she was implying. But – it couldn't be. He didn't want to believe it.

"And?" he pressed. If anyone was admitting to anything, it would be her.

She looked at him for a moment before her gaze softened, just slightly, and she stood up. "I could feel the heat as soon as you walked through the door."

He stared at her, trying to keep himself calm through his pounding heart, even though he didn't feel even the faintest stirrings of the Hulk in the back of his mind. He didn't have time to think about how odd that was at the moment, however. It could have been one of the agent's tricks, those powers of 'persuasion' she'd spoken of earlier, but he knew somehow instinctively that what she said was true. Even the way she'd told her story seemed to imply that she'd already felt the heat of one mark appearing before his, and he knew that there was a black space around his mark for six people.

Romanoff rose to her feet, walking over to him and gently grabbing the front of his shirt. He abruptly brought up a hand to still hers when they went to his buttons.

"You don't have to," he said quietly. He knew he was a monster, that he didn't deserve one soulmate, much less six. He didn't want her to feel obligated to anything, especially just because she was trying to get him to come in, to do her job. He continued his thought, "You can forget that you met me."

"Perhaps I could," she agreed blandly, not moving her hands and staring into his eyes. "But you have five other people who might think otherwise, and I'm not making that decision for them. And if any one of them get you, I'm not going to be the one missing out."

His hand dropped from hers when he found the determination in her eyes that said she wasn't letting this go. They kept their eyes on each others' while she undid the top three buttons, and when her eyes dropped to his chest, to his soul mark, his did too.

And there, over the familiar bubbles of green chemicals, was a new mark – a black background, and a red hourglass in its center. Looking back at her, he saw that she had pulled down her shirt far enough to show him her own mark. He saw the red hourglass in the center, two more soul marks above it, and then his own familiar mark below one with a red star.

"So," she started, and he looked back up at her to find that her expression was slightly guarded. "I can't speak for the red star, but the one with the arrow needs help. His mind is currently being controlled by the guy who stole that Tesseract."

Bruce gave her a little smile, making his decision with the news that the person who belonged in one of his black spaces was in danger. "Well, I have to say, I had my doubts, but you _are_ good at persuasion."

…

Tony wasn't sure he liked the Captain.

Contrary to popular belief, he did actually give people a chance before dismissing them as unimportant or deciding he didn't like them. And he knew how he could be inaccurately portrayed in the media, so he took Howard's words growing up with a grain of salt. Their first words had been courteous, open minded, when they'd faced down Loki in Stuttgart.

And he knew how people could react when under stress, so he didn't hold the Captain's curt attitude while they traded subtle barbs on the Quinjet against him. _He_ was suspicious of the Asgardian's easy compliance as well, and he supposed it didn't help put the captain at ease when he couldn't actually see the face of his supposed ally.

So, he was holding off judgement for the moment, while keeping himself carefully guarded. He glanced at the redheaded agent copiloting the jet, musing how in another time he would've gone after her with interest. Of course, that was before Afghanistan and before Iron Man. Still, she was pretty, and her dangerous aura was almost thrilling, because he knew that she could probably take down Rogers if she really wanted to. And that was hot, but he wasn't going to get in the way, because he didn't have a soul.

He shook himself mentally, focusing on the problem at hand. Loki. What was he up to? Why was he so compliant?

Later, after the little showdown with Thor, he decided to let cooler heads reign before they talked again, and went ahead to the Helicarrier while the Captain stayed with the two Asgardians.

He was beginning to feel more amused with the captain than annoyed. But at the same time, very sad. The man wasn't even thirty yet, and he was already so… _responsible_. Sure, it was a bit of an in-your-face way that was admittedly irritating, but that could also be attributed to youth. And he _was_ young. Far be it from him to talk about loss, but he could see that Rogers was floundering. The only amusement came from how he tried to act like he was just fine with the 21st century, in the same way that he'd pretended to know what fondue was in the forties. Others could see he wasn't there, but he was convinced that he was fooling everyone into believing that he knew it all, even believing it a little himself.

On second thought, that wasn't amusing at all – it was sad. And dammit, he did _not_ want to feel sympathy for the guy Howard had waxed poetic about in all his years growing up. He wanted to hate him, even if he reminded him of a giant puppy.

"I'm telling you – you just haven't seen enough of the world," Tony argued with Agent as they walked down the hall of the Helicarrier, forcing his thoughts back to the present. They were on their way to the room with the others, so that they could meet each other more formally, without being at each others' throats for the sole reason of releasing some stress. Tony was still in his Iron Man armor, so that he could continue with the whole secret identity shtick.

"I go around the world all the time for SHIELD," Agent said in his usual mild voice. "And Pepper visits all over for SI."

"But you don't actually meet the _people_ ," Tony stressed.

It was a longstanding back-and-forth between the two of them – and occasionally, Pepper, when she heard the arguing. Pepper and Agent (it was their joke by now, that Tony wouldn't call Coulson by anything else) were each others' soulmates, but there was a third mark on their chests that was still black for the mysterious other that neither of them had met yet. Tony tried convincing them to go and find this third person, and the argument always came back that they would meet them when it was the proper time, or that they didn't actually have the time to go on a personal mission to find someone else, or a slew of other excuses that Tony always pushed to the wayside. He knew they were curious – who wouldn't be? – but they were also content in their relationship as it currently was. Still, Tony insisted that they would be _more_ than content if they just found that last piece.

"You need to kick back and take a real vacation, Agent," Tony continued. "One without all this spy business or any of Pepper's planning with the company."

"We don't exactly have the time for it at the moment," Agent replied with a calm smile as they approached the room where they could hear voices coming from.

"It doesn't have to be a month-long retreat," Tony countered. "I do have a private jet, after all."

"I think it's about the mechanics," an unfamiliar man's voice drifted from the room they were headed toward. "Iridium – what do they need the iridium for?"

"It's a stabilizing agent," Tony called ahead in answer. He looked back at Agent and addressed him more quietly. "Seriously – take a weekend, and I can fly you to Paris." Agent simply gave him a patient smile and directed him toward the others, separating off on his own.

"Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD," Tony went on, focusing on the new people that SHIELD had assembled for the Avengers Initiative. He could pick out Captain America easy enough, especially as he'd already met him, then there was Thor, whom he'd had a brief battle with an hour before, and then Doctor Bruce Banner, the green rage monster he'd been personally recruited to help against General Ross. There was also the pretty redhead sitting at the table, and another female agent with dark hair was standing by and contributing to the discussion.

As he approached Thor, he looked up at his vaguely surprised expression and said, "No hard feelings, Point Break." Shame the alien probably wouldn't understand the reference. He patted the muscular arm as he passed him. "You've got a mean swing.

"Also," he went back to his earlier point, "Means the portal can open as wide – and stay open as long – as Loki wants."

He let the gauntlets detract from over his hands as he approached the screens, making idle, meaningless remarks as he went. The freedom of his hands allowed him to move things about on the screens, and the tech attached at his forearms made his hands seem a lot rougher and a lot tanner than they actually were. He was a paranoid bastard, but so what? Someone could totally identify him by his hands – he was sure that at least a quarter of the agents in the room would be able to, if they were trying hard enough. But then he might be giving them too much credit – no one noticed when he put the tiny bug on one of the computers to let JARVIS inside.

"Why do you now hide your face?" Thor asked him when he paused in his rambling of the theoretical possibilities. "Surely you do not require all of your armor when you are not in battle."

Right – he was new, and probably wouldn't know about the Tony Stark/Iron Man situation. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure the other 'recruits' knew, either. Might as well get it out in the open now.

"I work for Tony Stark," he said plainly. "Bodyguard of sorts, but he lets me out on loan occasionally when needed, and the Loki situation required it. Keeping the armor on all the time protects my identity."

"But we are all on the same side here," Thor said, confusion evident. "None would hurt you on this craft."

"Loki is still here," Tony reminded him. "And even if he wasn't, it's safer for none of you to know anything either, in case someone _not_ on our side gets to you." He put up his hands as though in surrender. "Have issues with it, take it up with Stark. It's in my contract that I won't reveal who I am to anyone – SHIELD included."

"Does Loki need any particular _kind_ of power source?" the captain asked, pulling them back to the problem at hand, and Tony was grateful for it. As much as he could shine in the limelight as Tony Stark, he didn't like so much of that attention directed at him as Iron Man. He didn't want anyone getting even the slightest clue who he was, and as much as he could talk circles around an interrogator and skirt around the truth, SHIELD agents were trained to watch for any hitch in his breath or falter in his explanations. And he had two very formidable-looking female agents listening to what he said.

"He'd have to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin, just to break through the cooling barrier," Banner spoke up.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect," Tony countered.

"Well, if he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet," Banner offered.

Tony found himself delighted with Banner at the moment. He hadn't expected too much from meeting him – he remembered that old adage of "Never meet your heroes" – but finally he found someone who could speak English with him.

He didn't voice his thoughts however, because even though he'd allowed Iron Man some part of Tony Stark's intelligence, he couldn't sound like he knew the doctor's work as intimately as he did. And he was sure that if he started talking in more depth with the man, science that made no sense to most people would come spewing from his mouth, and he couldn't have anyone even suspecting the truth about him.

So instead, he pointed at Banner and said, "You make sense. You're my new favorite person."

Fury came in then, bringing them all back into focus with his comments about the cube.

"Dr. Banner is here to track the cube," he said. "I was hoping Stark might join him – is he on board?"

"Dealing with engineering lingo that goes past my head," Tony confirmed, bringing the gauntlets back down over his hands.

"I'd start with that stick of his," Rogers commented. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."

Tony nodded to himself thoughtfully inside his head. Even if it wasn't HYDRA, they would've no doubt had an interest in its capabilities – especially at its being able to control Selvig and Barton's minds so thoroughly.

His eyes roved over the HUD screen in his vision, bringing up files about Barton and Selvig specifically, as Tony had asked JARVIS for before he'd planted the bug. He couldn't see any connections between the two that would make Loki want them in particular, except that they were both experts in their fields.

"I don't know about that…but it is powered by the cube," Fury was saying, and Tony idly wondered why they all just called it 'the cube'. Dumbing it down, he supposed. A nickname, perhaps – it did have fewer syllables than 'the Tesseract'. His eyes went to a blinking corner of his screen that began blinking a sign that it needed to power down soon to reboot its energy. He supposed Tony Stark would have to make an appearance soon.

Fury went on, "And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Tony looked over at Thor's confused question. "I do not understand…"

"I do!" Rogers cut him off, pointing at him happily. Tony rolled his eyes slightly inside the helmet, and it was quiet for a moment. Rogers sort of shrugged after the brief pause, looking slightly awkward as he explained, "I – I understood that reference."

Tony's lips quirked slightly as he caught just a bit of the captain's profile. He couldn't help himself – rather than annoying now, he found it almost cute how excited Rogers had been to have understood someone's reference. The Wizard of Oz had come out in 1939, so the odds of him having seen the movie even before he awoke in the twenty-first century was pretty high. Some of the captain's excitement probably even came from understanding a reference that was _in_ his time.

 _Stop it,_ he told himself sternly when he realized where his thoughts had gone. _Don't feel sympathy for him, because then you'll like him. And if you like him, you'll feel guilty that he doesn't even know who you are._

He looked to Banner to distract himself from his thoughts. "I've got to go take off the suit and let it power up, and that means I'll be sitting with it for a while to keep my identity intact – I can get Stark to come up to the lab right now and start working on the cube."

"Of course," Banner accepted. "I can wait here for Stark and direct him to the lab."

Tony nodded in wordless acceptance and made his way back down the hall he'd come in. It was a good thing JARVIS was already in the mainframe – he'd be able to shut off the security cameras as he walked so that no one would know where Iron Man had gone, or would see Tony Stark reappearing.

He was paranoid, but it worked.

…

 **My blood runs regularly at 95.4, while the average person's blood is supposed to be 98.7 degrees, with typically a one degree variance in different people. (Let me tell ya, it can be a** ** _pain_** **to always get so easily overheated in the summer, especially when I don't sweat as much as I should.) I figured it would make sense if Natasha's blood adjusted slightly for different climates, too, and that's where this number came from. It's not unrealistic, I promise. And even if it was…MCU. Soul marks. This is definitely closer to fantasy than nonfiction, come on.**


	5. No Concept of Personal Space

**I totally have an excuse for not updating in like a month...I've just been posting a whole lot more oneshots lately, so I didn't exactly have the desire to write another chapter for this fic, and my muse here just left me to the wolves. But, I've posted about 15,000 words in the form of 13 oneshots and ficlets since I've updated, so I haven't just been lazing around! And that's my only excuse. *peace sign***

 **Anyway, as for this chapter, there are some thoughts in here about suicide, but it's more about Steve realizing the mindset that someone has to be in, so it's not super triggering, but I thought I should warn you guys. ;)**

 **Hope you enjoy!**

 **...**

Bruce hadn't expected much of Tony Stark. It was well known that he was a genius, so sure – he expected him to be able to keep up with him, but he'd also expected some level of arrogance and talking over him, wanting to get all the credit for some discovery or something. He'd expected it to only be compounded by the fact that he had the alter ego of a mindlessly destructive monster, so obviously anything else he could contribute would be summarily dismissed as well. And if for none of that, surely the man would be leery of getting too close to him, in case he lost his temper or something and proceeded to smash him into oblivion.

But none of that had happened. Stark had come in with a jaunty grin, shook his hand, and then said, "It's good to meet you, Doctor Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And"—here he looked excited, like he was meeting his idol and couldn't resist the comment—"I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

(Bruce had been wholly uncertain how to respond to that, but he had seen no sign that the billionaire was lying, so he'd responded with a simple though hesitant "Thanks" and hoped it would suffice.)

For the next half hour, he and Stark – or Tony, as the billionaire insisted he be called – examined the stick that Loki had used, so that they could have a baseline for how to search for the Tesseract. As they did so, they chatted about all manner of science, and Bruce was pleased to participate in the scholarly debate. Helping people in Third World countries was great and all, but it wasn't exactly fulfilling or stimulating on the mind. This little break was enjoyable – and he assumed that it was for Tony too, because in very little time, he had already invited him to the Tower. Bruce didn't plan to stay here that long, but the sentiment was nice all the same, and he told him as much.

(Though something told him that Tony would keep pushing until he accepted anyway…but he would concern himself with that later, if it even happened.)

Although, Tony really didn't have much of a concept for personal space – or even self preservation. This was shown clearly when he poked him in the side with something that sparked with electricity, and seemed to be looking for signs that he was losing control of the Hulk.

And then of course, that was the time that Steve Rogers decided to appear.

Bruce didn't think that anyone else would have noticed the quick flicker of expressions that crossed Tony's face at the first reprimanding comments from the captain. But he was rather skilled at watching for changes in emotion due to his childhood, and then beyond when he became the monster, so he saw the surprise, and then the thoughtfulness, and then the sad resignation and acceptance before his walls were up again, and he was the same arrogant billionaire he was to the masses.

Watching him out the corner of his eye as he worked, Bruce could only wonder – just what was going through the genius' mind?

…

Tony was surprised at the abrupt and seeming personal hostility that emanated from Rogers as soon as the blond stepped into the room with the reprimand on his lips. He would have thought that, of all people, he as Tony Stark would be the one that the man would try and forge some sort of connection with. Howard had talked enough times about Rogers that he knew that while they weren't anywhere near best friends, they had still been friendly with each other. Friendly enough that it seemed fairly logical to try and be friends with the dead man's only son when there was no one else alive who would remember the captain personally. (Aunt Peggy might, but she was slipping more every day, and that would probably be more depressing than helpful at this point.)

But perhaps that was why Rogers _didn't_ want to be friendly. Tony would just remind him of Howard, and that would remind him of everything he'd lost every time Rogers saw his face. It probably wasn't even something intentional on Rogers' part – a subconscious need to push him away immediately was more likely than conscious hostility.

And the thing was, Tony could understand that. Even if he _didn't_ look so similar to his father, he could see how Rogers was hurting. People had likely been treating him with kid gloves since he'd come out of the ice, too afraid of setting him off, and by consequence he didn't have any friends here in the twenty-first century. He was completely alone, even surrounded by people all the time. Tony understood that feeling.

He briefly considered being that person to offer the hand of real friendship, but he dismissed the idea before it had even fully formed. It was a bad idea, for several reasons – the first of which because Rogers clearly had no interest in singing Kumbaya with him at any time in the near future. (Not that he blamed him – he _hated_ that song.) He was also Tony Stark, and everyone knew he was an arrogant asshole with no regard for others. It would be wildly out of character to try and make friends even with Captain America. There was also the fact that if he became friends with Rogers, he would inevitably find out his double identity as Iron Man, and even though he was Captain America – paragon of virtue and truth and all that – he didn't know him enough to trust him with a secret that big.

Even discounting all of that, it was clear that Rogers was _looking_ for a fight. He _needed_ to argue with someone, get some of that anger out, to feel like he had some sort of foundation to stand on.

And, well…Tony Stark was never known as someone to back down from a fight.

 _Just for now,_ he told himself as he resigned to the inevitable. _Duke it out with him until we figure out what Loki's up to and get that over with. After that…maybe something will work out._

So, it was with those thoughts in mind – the thoughts that passed through and were recognized before a full second had passed – that he started the beginnings of an argument with Rogers.

…

Clint had never felt so sure of himself. The Tesseract – it gave him wisdom and knowledge. It gave him a confidence that he knew he could complete his mission with minimal difficulty.

And of course that mission was to serve Loki. Loki knew what to give him, and how it would help him. Clint remembered back at the SHIELD base, when he had tried to stop Loki, tried to capture him to lock him up. He was so grateful that instead Loki had directed him towards that light that showed him everything. Loki had opened his mind, given him access to knowledge he never would have found on his own. Of course it was only fitting to show his gratitude in the form of utter devotion and loyalty to bring Loki to his goal. Loki's goal was all that mattered. He hadn't needed to eat or sleep with the blue light of the Tesseract guiding him along, holding him up where normally his mortal body would fail after so long.

The mission in Stuttgart had been a success, thanks to that blue light that filled his vision and whispered things in his near-deaf ears. He knew that Loki was on the SHIELD helicarrier, just as planned. As he suited up on the quinjet as it approached the helicarrier, he didn't have any doubts that this plan would be carried out with perfection. He knew exactly where he was needed and what to do – he'd even built an arrow that would inject into the rights holes in the computer system to completely shut it down. There was no way this plan could go wrong. There was no way it would be possible to fail Loki.

He snapped his bow open as the back of the jet began to open, and he drew one of his explosive arrows from the quiver. Drawing the bowstring back, he rapidly calculated the trajectory needed with the distance and the wind. Glowing blue eyes stared across at the helicarrier where his master and leader was, and he was careful to aim at the engine furthest from the Trickster God.

A breath, and then he fired.

…

Steve was enraged to find that weapons were being made with the energy of the Tesseract. Fury had told him that they didn't do this, that they wouldn't be ruling by fear. That was what had convinced Steve to stay with SHIELD, to work for and with them. But to find the stockpile of weapon prototypes…

He had to grudgingly admit that perhaps Stark was right to be suspicious enough to hack into SHIELD's servers and files.

As he walked down the hallway of the helicarrier, carrying one of the clunky weapons he'd found, he hardly noticed agents giving him a wide berth when they saw the dark expression on his face. He only had one destination in mind – back in the lab, with Stark and Doctor Banner. They were the only ones he had seen suspicious of SHIELD thus far, the only ones who were doing something about it, so it was logical to go to them to figure out what to do with this information. The weapon was simply proof of what he'd found.

However, as he approached the lab, he heard Fury confronting Stark about finding the Tesseract – clearly he'd discovered that Tony's computer was breaking into SHIELD's files and was trying to head him off before it got any further. He almost snorted at the thought, because in the brief moments he'd interacted with Stark, he knew already that the man wasn't just going to back down because someone glared at him.

But the fact that Fury was there didn't cause him to change his trajectory. Instead, he made a quick mental shift in his plans, deciding that confronting Fury about the weapons at the same time as informing Stark and Banner about them was as good a plan as any.

"What _is_ Phase Two?" Stark asked rhetorically as Steve came into the room. He dropped the weapon on the table, and they all looked up at him.

"Phase Two is SHIELD uses the Tesseract to make weapons," he said, and looked at Stark. "Sorry – the computer was moving a little slow for me." His voice was harder than he'd intended toward the billionaire, but he didn't bother worrying about it – it was understandable after all that his outrage toward Fury and SHIELD at the weapons would come out toward other people as well.

"Rogers," Fury said in his placating voice, sounding more like he was trying to hide his panicking at being found out. "We gathered everything related to the Tesseract; that does not mean that we're…"

"I'm sorry, Nick!" Stark called across the room, cutting him off as he got up and turned the computer screen around to show some sort of missile coming together from all its parts. The Tesseract was clear in its blue color right next to the blueprints. " _What_ were you lying?"

"I was wrong, Director," Steve said in a hard voice as he and the two geniuses behind him stood in solidarity against Fury. "The world hasn't changed a bit."

"Did you know about this?" Doctor Banner said behind him as Thor and Agent Romanoff walked in.

"Do you want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" the redhead said, and Steve heard the wariness in his voice, could read in her posture how she was ready to move in a moment.

But the doctor only laughed derisively and said, "I was in Calcutta; I was pretty well removed."

"Loki is manipulating you," Romanoff said, stepping forward.

"And you've been doing what, exactly?" Banner said sarcastically.

"You didn't come here because I batted my eyelashes at you," the redhead was now right in front of the doctor, looking up at him – daringly, Steve wanted to say.

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because you suddenly get a little twitchy," Banner shot back, and Steve caught a little smile on Stark's face as the doctor stepped away from Romanoff, going toward the screen with the missile blueprints on it. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction!"

Steve was as surprised as everyone else in the room when Fury pointed at Thor and blamed him for their sudden cautiousness. He listened as Fury explained what had happened when Thor came to Earth, and then the thoughts on the matter. He found himself uncertain what side to take, because while he could understand where Fury was coming from, he didn't think that there was truly any governmental power on Earth who could handle such a high responsibility – and if there were, then there wasn't enough security on their side to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. He'd just come out of World War II – it wasn't a good idea to even risk a third one, and these weapons were a high risk. Stark had broken in to the files within hours, and it was only a good thing that Stark was against weapons now and had no intention of building one of the ones from these plans. But if someone else got in? If someone within SHIELD went rogue and decided to bomb Europe? It would be a disaster.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it," Thor said, stepping forward and looking like he was ready to tear the director a new one. " _And_ his allies. It is a _signal_ to _all_ the Realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of _war_."

"A higher form?" Steve repeated, hoping he wasn't the only one lost with the choice of wording but feeling dread for what it _could_ mean.

"You forced our hand," Fury said unrepentantly. "We had to come up with something…"

"A nuclear deterrent," Stark piped in, and Steve looked over to see all trace of smile gone from his face. Instead something dark was there – something that showed his sincere disapproval with Fury's words. He went on with dark cynicism, "Because that always calms everything _right_ down."

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Fury said rhetorically, and Steve heard the vague note of triumph in the man's voice, thinking that he had the man there.

But that wasn't fair. Stark had gotten out of the weapons business for a reason – clearly he thought it a mistake, and wanted to change and become a better man. Steve had seen some videos of the billionaire in his earlier days, and he saw how he'd changed after Afghanistan, even if it wasn't reflected in the file SHIELD had given him when they'd brought him in. For Fury to remind him of the days before Afghanistan was unwarranted – especially because it had been almost four years ago.

"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep in this," Steve said, stepping forward daringly. "But he _hasn't_ for quite some time, so the point is moot."

Stark was looking at him oddly, but he ignored him as Thor pressed the point further.

"I thought humans were more _evolved_ than this," he said with a dark frown.

" _Excuse me_ , did we come to _your_ planet and blow something up?" Fury demanded, finally beginning to look agitated.

Steve could feel himself becoming more tense as well, for seeming no reason as it spiked so suddenly. He couldn't really follow all of the arguing that occurred within the next few minutes, but he knew that he was trading subtle and not-so-subtle barbs with both Stark and Fury.

"You speak of control and yet you cause chaos!" Thor's voice spoke over the others, and everyone momentarily quieted down.

"It's his MO, isn't it?" Banner's quiet voice pierced into the room next. "I mean, what are we – a _team_? No, no, no – we're a chemical mixture that _makes_ chaos. We're…we're a time bomb."

Fury seemed to be thinking the same thing that Steve was – Banner needed to calm down a bit – because he stepped forward and said firmly, " _You_ need to _step away_."

"Why _shouldn't_ the guy let off a little steam?" Stark piped in, clapping a hand on Steve's shoulder.

For some reason, this caused Steve to grow all the more agitated, even as he recognized in some part of his brain that Stark wasn't actually serious, and was just trying to lighten the situation – a better plan than having the doctor leave in a huff to stew over the conversation.

He shoved the hand off of his shoulder and stated, "You know _damn_ well why – back off!"

Stark's eyes showed his surprise a bare instant before a challenging look overcame his features. "Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me."

"Right," Steve said sarcastically, walking around the man and still getting closer to his face, all while wondering in some distant part of his brain – _what was he doing?_ "Big man, hiding behind another man in a suit of armor. Take Iron Man away, and what are you?"

Stark was unfazed as he looked back at him and rattled off, "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

"I know guys with none of that worth _ten_ of you," Steve said bitterly, an image of blue eyes and a boyish smile flashing across his memory. "I've seen the footage. Iron Man is held up as a hero, but where are you the whole time? What are _you_ doing to help people with all of your money and fame? The only one _you_ care about is yourself. You're not the guy to make a sacrifice play – to lay down on the wire and let the _other guy_ crawl over _you_."

"I think I would just _cut_ the wire," Stark said, jaw tight as he looked at him, and Steve felt gratified to see the first hints of being able to hurt the other man.

His smile held no amusement when he looked at the billionaire. "Always a way out," he said derisively. "You know, you may _not_ be the enemy, but you better _stop_ pretending to be a hero."

"A hero? Like you?" Stark retorted, eyes sharp and steely. "You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers." He stepped forward into Steve's personal space, and although Stark had to look up to see his eyes, he had a power about him that had Steve hardly noticing the difference. "Everything _special_ about you came out of a _bottle_."

Steve didn't let himself feel the hurt that statement caused. He smiled bitterly at Stark, itching for… _something_. "Maybe if you put on your bodyguard's suit, we could go a few rounds. Wouldn't want you critically injured, after all." _Yes we do._

Thor laughed mockingly across the room. "You humans are so _petty_ ," he stated, and a crinkle formed between his eyebrows. "And tiny."

"Yeah, _this_ is a team," Banner said from over by the table.

Steve vaguely noted that Stark was rubbing his forehead as though to get rid of a headache, and studiously didn't rub his own slightly aching head. Odd…

"Agent Romanoff, will you escort Doctor Banner back to…"

"Where?" Banner cut Fury off, and he was clearly still feeling the tense atmosphere in the lab. "You rented my room."

 _Room?_ He wondered idly, Banner's tone of voice telling him that it wasn't, well…a room.

"The cell was just in…"

"In case you needed to kill me – but you _can't_. I _know_ – I _tried_!"

Several thoughts went through Steve's head at that moment – the first being the realization that the cell that Loki was being held in was this so-called 'room'. Then there was the fact that Banner knew the cell was for him, assumedly without having to be told, and wasn't it just sad that the man would come to _expect_ some sort of bad treatment with that, and yet he still came aboard the helicarrier, anyway? Then there was that Fury didn't even try to deny it – Fury clearly saw Banner as more monster than man as well. Steve was really growing to dislike Fury. Finally, there was that statement that Banner had tried to kill himself, and he saw Stark from the corner of his eye looking at the scientist with both sadness and understanding, which – whoa. That understanding that Stark possessed, that would only come if he'd felt the same way at some point, maybe even tried suicide himself. And the fact that Stark had felt and experienced that caused his understanding of the man to abruptly shift into something foreign, because if he'd ever felt suicidal, then a lot, if not _all_ , of that man's arrogance was faked.

Banner was going on about his past attempt at killing himself, and then continuing on with how he had ended up having to press forward and become better. Steve felt for him, he really did, but he abruptly went tense when the doctor picked up the scepter on the table beside him while he talked.

"You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff?" Steve heard the man say, sounding nothing short of upset. "You wanna know how I stay calm?"

It was silent for a long, drawn out moment, and Steve noticed Fury unclip his gun while Romanoff's hand drifted to the side in the direction of her own gun. Steve decided to speak before anything worse happened.

"Doctor Banner," he said carefully, and the man looked up at him. "Put down the scepter."

Banner looked down at his hand, and seemed to notice for the first time that he was holding said scepter. It confirmed Steve's vague suspicions that the scepter was somehow influencing all of their emotions in the room.

The beeping of the computer in the corner was what broke the tension, and Banner set the scepter down, saying sardonically, "Sorry kids, you don't get to see my party trick, after all."

"You've located the Tesseract?" Thor pressed, turning his body to follow the scientist's progress toward the computer, with Romanoff right behind him.

"Iron Man can get there faster in the suit," Stark piped in.

Thor was saying something, but Steve focused more on the fact that Stark wanted his bodyguard to fetch the cube alone.

"No – _neither_ of you is going alone!" Steve said to him, grabbing the billionaire's arm. He remembered the cube from the war, and didn't want to think about what might happen to someone directly exposed to it who might not know how to handle it.

But his hand was swiftly batted away while Stark said daringly, "You gonna stop me?"

"Let's find out!" Steve shot back, ire rising at the utter stubbornness in the other man.

"I'm not afraid of you, old man," the billionaire said darkly.

"Then let's find out," Steve repeated, not even caring at the moment that the man in front of him was…well, _just_ a man. A man who could get hurt a lot more easily than Steve could, and wouldn't heal as quickly. At the moment, he didn't care a whit about the unfair advantage. "Are _you_ going to fight me, or will you just have your bodyguard do it?"

A beeping came from the computer as they silently stared each other down.

"Oh, my god," Doctor Banner muttered suddenly, voice filled with horror.

And then the room exploded.

 **...**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	6. Suit Up

**I deserve a cookie for such a quick update. *smug grin***

 **...**

Hulk knew that there was danger on the helicarrier. He could feel something cold and blue itching at him, urging him to get up and take control, but Puny Banner wasn't noticing. Puny Banner told him to stay down even as he got agitated. And since Hulk couldn't see any threat, he acceded to Puny Banner's wishes and stayed back.

All bets were off though, when the explosion rocked the helicarrier and threw Puny Banner down to the next floor.

 _Protect. Protect Puny Banner. Protect Red. Protect Smart. Protect Blue._

Puny Banner was trying to keep him back, but he was stronger. He knew that Puny Banner couldn't protect Red and Smart and Blue as well as he could. Someone was trying to hurt them, and Hulk was going to go find them and _smash_ them.

He finally forced himself into control, and roared angrily in a mixture of warning to the ones trying to hurt Red and Smart and Blue and a shout to the feebly struggling Puny Banner to stay back.

He looked for Red – Red was the last one he saw, so she should be close and he could protect her. He turned around, and saw her standing there, and gave her a fierce grimace to show her how he would destroy the ones scaring her. Because he knew she was afraid, and he couldn't let that happen.

Abruptly she turned and ran away, and he gave another short roar, assuming that she must be leading him to the ones he was supposed to smash.

But no – she was running away. She was trying to escape him! Why was she running away from him? Didn't she know he would protect her? She made Puny Banner happy – happy enough that it touched the threads of Hulk's own consciousness. He needed to keep his eyes on her, and make sure that she was and would be okay.

He tried finding her, but she kept running.

Well. Maybe she was going to go smash somewhere else. He could find the people trying to hurt them on his own, he was sure.

But wait – no, he found her again! He let out a wordless yell, but then she pointed one of the stingies at him. What? Why was Red trying to hurt him?

But instead, the stingie hit something in front of him, and something foggy spewed over his vision so he couldn't see.

No – she couldn't run away again! He was protecting her! He ran after her, not caring as he knocked over lots of stuff in front of him in his pursuit. He was glad she was running fast, because this was an emergency! He had to find the puny enemies to smash! It was a good thing Red understood that, at least.

Oops. He accidentally swiped his hand at her, and it tossed her into the wall. He came closer to see if she was alright, but put his arm in front of his face so that she wouldn't point the stingies at him again.

Then something tackled him from out of nowhere, and he actually moved!

He rolled across the ground, crashing into another wall and breaking through. He didn't care about the other puny humans in the room, because he'd found a target to lock onto – the puny human who wasn't as puny as the rest of them. Not-So-Puny had torn him away from Red, and for that he must be smashed.

"We are not your enemies, Banner!" Not-So-Puny said when he was struggling to hold his fist up. "Try to think!"

He was thinking just fine. Not-So-Puny was keeping him away from Red. Not-So-Puny was not someone he had to protect. Not-So-Puny, and anyone else who got in Hulk's way, was going to be smashed.

…

Tony felt numb.

It seemed inconceivable, that everything could go so wrong so quickly.

The helicarrier was fine – he and Rogers had succeeded in fixing it – but so many other things had gone wrong that Tony didn't even know where to begin processing it all.

Banner had destroyed a lot of the helicarrier in his fight with Thor. He was missing now – thrown far away by the explosion of the plane that had been shooting at him to distract him.

Thor was missing as well. Security showed how he had been locked in Loki's cage and then dropped out. Tony was pretty sure that the Asgardian could live through that, but he wasn't certain.

Loki had escaped. Selvig was still under his control, helping him.

Agent…

He'd been killed. It had been Loki's scepter that had done it – not by magic, but by the sharp end being impaled through his chest. Bloody. Personal.

 _Oh god, what am I going to tell Pepper?_

He couldn't call her with news like this. She needed someone with her, and she was in DC on business. She needed someone with her when she found out her soulmate was dead. He could only hope that she wouldn't look down at her soul mark before he got to her, because the dull shade of grey that was Coulson's portion of the mark would tell her what nothing else would be able to.

 _He's gone._

Barton had been captured though, so at least Loki didn't have the deadly former mercenary on his side. He had the skill set to do a _lot_ of damage wherever he so chose. And if the rumors were true, Romanoff had been able to break the mind control on the other agent, so at least there was hope for the others still under Loki's control.

But at the moment, he couldn't bring himself to care much about the archer who may or may not be back on their side. Agent had been far from being his best friend, but he still felt his loss keenly. And Pepper… He cared more for her pain than his own at the moment, because that was her _soulmate_ that was gone. And Agent hadn't even been able to meet their third before he died.

He made a promise to himself then, that he was going to find Pepper's third whether or not she wanted his help. She needed that third in a way that no one else would be able to help, and he wasn't going to spare any funds or resources to find the last piece of their puzzle.

"…Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea; in heroes."

He jerked abruptly to his feet, still in his Iron Man armor. He couldn't bear to listen to Fury right now, to be in the room where only he and Rogers sat unharmed at the table. It reminded him too much of how many others _should_ be sitting at that table with them, others standing around and at attention like the good agents they were proud to be.

…

Clint came to groggily, in multicolored flashes that made no sense. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognized that the colors were supposed to be his surroundings, people and a room, and he shook his head violently to try and clear it.

Nausea rolled in his stomach, a combination of starvation, dehydration, lack of sleep, and plain guilt. He shook his head again, trying to bring his mind back online.

The cold blue was fading more rapidly with every moment inside his head, giving way to memories of what he'd done the past few days and a sudden awareness of his own bodily functions.

Straps – they were tied around his wrists, and he wouldn't be able to get out of them on his own. Instinctively he jerked and pulled against them, hands clenching into fists. He knew he must not be with Loki anymore, because he didn't have that chilling blue influence in his head anymore, but his brain wasn't working enough to try and figure out where he _could_ be now. He squeezed his eyes shut, sweat beading down his face as he tried to clear his brain.

Colors – _too many colors_.

"Clint," a familiar voice said, piercing through his confusion like an echoing wave. "You're gonna be alright."

His eyes opened, and – red. He could see the glowing halo of fire that was Natasha's hair, and a vague outline of her dark lips. SHIELD – he must be on the helicarrier still, this time in the med bay.

"You know that?" he got out breathlessly. "Is that what _you_ know?" He would trust her knowledge over any of the SHIELD doctors that had looked at him. Her knowledge would assure him much more than anyone else saying something like that.

She didn't say anything, only rising to her feet to go to the table beside him, and honestly that was more comforting than anything she could have said. Natasha was still Natasha – she never answered the same question twice, not unless it was part of a mission. That she was treating him no differently than before all this shit went down meant more to him than he could say, but he didn't let himself dwell on it.

"I got no window," he said, voice closer to a whisper in his exhaustion. "Have to flush him out."

He heard pouring water, and then Natasha said with her usual levelheadedness, "You've gotta level out – it's gonna take time."

Clint made a sound of acknowledgement, not quite agreement, and said, "Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out – stuff something else in? You know what it's like to be unmade?"

She turned her head to meet his gaze, and said simply, "You know that I do."

Right. Of course, he berated himself. He knew what had happened to her, most everything about her – he was stupid to ask what he did, like he needed her pity.

But she was looking at him calmly, with no judgement, so he took it for the acceptance that it was and didn't comment on his thoughts or apologize. It wasn't how they worked.

"Why am I back?" he asked finally. "How'd you get him out?"

He was only grateful that Loki was out now, no longer whispering things in his ears and making him _want_ to do his bidding and serve him. He didn't want to think that such a thing could happen again, but if it did, he _needed_ to know how to break it. He couldn't do all those things again.

 _You have heart…_

Those words would haunt him for years to come, he knew. Those last words Loki had said before he was in servitude to him.

"Cognitive recalibration," Natasha answered him, walking over and sitting down on the bed beside him. "I hit you really hard on the head."

A smile was quirking at her lips as she said it, but he could only feel grateful that she'd purposely given him a concussion.

"Thanks," he said genuinely, and her head snapped around to hear the honesty in his statement. She said nothing about it though, reaching over to undo the cuffs around his wrists. Honestly he wished that they would stay on, because he didn't trust himself – didn't trust that blue power – not to make him attack her again. But he knew that the redhead wouldn't hear of leaving him there, so he said nothing about it.

"Tasha," he said, trying to get her to look back at him again. She kept her gaze on the cuffs as she undid them, but he went on anyway, keeping his fists clenched as he prepared for the answer to the question he hadn't asked yet. "How many agents did…"

" _Don't_." Natasha cut him off sharply, finally looking up at him. " _Don't_ do that to yourself, Clint." Her voice was firm, but sad, and he wished he could make her happy again but he knew it was his own guilt that was upsetting her. He couldn't help how he felt.

"This is Loki," she went on. "This is monsters, and magic, and nothing we were _ever_ trained for."

Loki – that reminded him. She was a bit too serious, even for her, so something must be wrong. "Loki," he said, unable to keep the resentment for the Trickster God out of his voice. "He get away?"

It wasn't really a question, so Natasha didn't answer it. "Don't suppose you know where?" she asked wryly, not hoping for much.

"Didn't need to know," he said with a slight sigh as she got up. "Didn't ask." He moved his legs over the side of the bed, sitting up all the way now and taking one of the cups of water Natasha had poured. "He's gonna make his play soon, though. Today."

"We gotta stop him," Natasha said, turning around to look at him again with determination.

"Yeah? Who's 'we'?" Surely not just he and Natasha could take down the Asgardian, even as good as they were. Not to mention the fact that Loki was somehow bringing an _army_ to conquer Earth.

"I don't know," was what Natasha went with, and Clint paused, because it was rare that the Russian said so bluntly that she didn't know something. "Whoever's left."

It was something, at least.

"Well," he said with a nod to himself as he thought about it. "If I put an arrow through Loki's eye socket, I'd – sleep better, I suppose."

Natasha approached him again, sitting next to him on the bed. "Now you sound like you," she said, and he heard the smile in her voice.

He looked over at her, and took in the micro expressions on her face that said she was hiding something more. "But you don't," he said plainly, and at her look, he explained, "You're a spy – not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why?" He saw no trace of smile on her face now; instead she was pensively staring off into the distance. "What did Loki do to you?"

Her eyes flickered with a bit of surprise as she hastily assured him, "He didn't – just…"

Then she looked away, looking down at her lap, at her folded hands, and she was clearly very reluctant to tell him whatever was on her mind. But all it served to do was make Clint more worried.

"Tasha…" he urged her quietly.

Her expression hardened slightly with determination, and her voice was no-nonsense as she finally admitted, "I've been compromised."

Oh.

Now that she said it, he could remember how he'd given up so much information to Loki. Loki had asked him so many questions about SHIELD and its agents, the people he worked with most and who might interrogate him when he was aboard the helicarrier. Natasha had come up enough times, but Clint had been so willing, so _eager_ to share with Loki all that he knew, to serve him.

She turned her head again to look at him, and he sensed no recrimination there, even if he felt like he deserved it.

"I've got red in my ledger," she said, and he finally looked up at her. "I'd like to wipe it out."

"I'll help you," Clint promised, taking one of her hands in one of his own, because he had always stuck by her since they'd met, and he wasn't going to stop now, even though he felt inadequate.

She smiled at him, and although there were still thoughts of worry and guilt behind her eyes, he recognized it as genuine. "I know you will," she said, squeezing his hand gently. "We have a few others to help us, too."

"Who?" Clint asked curiously, because her smile was knowing and secretive.

Her smile grew more, and with her free hand, she reached up to unzip part of her suit, pulling it away to show the soul mark there.

He suddenly realized that there were three other marks that had appeared, and now she only had one last trapezoid that was black to show that she hadn't met them yet.

"This one belongs to Doctor Bruce Banner," Natasha said, tapping one finger against the mark that looked like a bunch of green bubbles. "Although you might remember him better as the Hulk."

"Well, shit," Clint breathed in surprise. He could _not_ have called that. He hadn't really thought about it much before, because the big green guy who liked smashing things didn't have a soul mark. But, it would make sense that the actual man who _became_ the Hulk would have a mark. Still, it was…surprising, that he would be one of the ones for him.

"I think the red, white and blue one is fairly obvious," Natasha said next, pulling him out of his thoughts and tapping the mark at the bottom of the circle. "Steve Rogers, or Captain America."

"Shit," Clint said again. The Hulk, and now Captain America. At least his curiosity was satisfied that he wasn't going to be soulmates with just assassins. After Natasha and then the Winter Soldier, he'd wondered.

"It's a good thing it's so obvious though, or I might not have recognized whose this one was." She tapped the next one, the one with the blue background and the red triangle outlined in darker blue. "This one is Iron Man's – or, the man underneath the suit. That one will be a bit complicated, because of his contract with Stark about keeping his identity a secret…but maybe Stark will make an exception for this."

"Well, it does remind me a bit of the glowy triangle in the chest of the suit," Clint observed. "And all three of them are going to help with Loki?"

"I know at least Rogers will – I would be surprised if Iron Man didn't, but I suppose that's up to Stark, considering that Iron Man is technically just his bodyguard on loan to SHIELD. But I don't think Stark would say no. As for Banner…well, we're not sure where he is at this point. He got caught in a small plane explosion and was thrown somewhere. He might come back; he might not. He didn't want to be a part of the fighting when I went to find him, but I also told him about you and that you needed help. If he wants to meet another soulmate, he'd have to come back."

Abruptly Clint found himself wondering if he'd actually met any of them while under Loki's control and didn't remember it, and without a word or explanation, he unzipped his vest and pulled up the bottom of his shirt. He breathed a sigh of relief when the only marks he had were the ones he'd had a week ago.

He looked up to see Natasha looking at him with a small trace of amusement. "While it wasn't my top priority, I did try to make sure that the others would stay away from you until you were yourself again. I wasn't sure how much you would be aware of what you'd done after you resurfaced."

"I remember most of it," Clint said darkly, and rather than zipping his vest again he took it off. "Just a few bits are spotty."

"You gonna wash up?" Natasha said as he rose to his feet.

"Yeah – I haven't bothered much with hygiene the past few days," Clint said dryly, and snorted. "Not as important as worshipping Loki, after all."

Natasha read between the lines of what he didn't say, and rose as well, going toward the door.

"I'll get some food for when you get out," she promised him.

It was almost a half hour later when he heard an unfamiliar man's voice outside the bathroom door, talking to Natasha. Slinging his towel over his bare shoulders, he went to the door in time to hear the man say, "Can you fly one of those jets?"

He opened the door, volunteering, "I can," before he even processed that the man he was talking to was Captain America.

The blond man – holy shit, he did _not_ realize how handsome the guy was before; the pictures really didn't do him justice – looked at him, and his eyes flickered down to the soul mark on his chest. His expression flickered with surprise, looking back up at his face before looking at Natasha. Clint looked down to see that the captain's mark had appeared next to the Winter Soldier's – although the Soldier's was mostly blocked by the end of his towel – and supposed that the change in color must have been what had drawn his attention.

He looked up just as the captain returned his attention to him, not mentioning their matching marks at all. Which, in retrospect, was just as well, because they had an army to take down.

"You got a suit?" was all that the captain said, and Clint nodded once affirmatively. "Then suit up."

 **...**

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **P.S. I haven't started writing the next chapter, and I'm kind of waffling between showing some of the Chitauri fight or skipping right over it. Your thoughts?**


	7. This Ought to Be Interesting

**Look at that - an UPDATE! I'm on a roll right now - let's see how long this lasts. ;) Sorry for any mistakes - I have a job interview that I have to go get ready for, but I didn't want to push off the update any longer. Hope you like it!**

 **...**

Tony was nothing short of exhausted.

He had bruises everywhere, and a wound on his head just barely covered by his hair that had finally stopped oozing blood. There was a gash crossing into his eyebrow that had just barely begun to scab over, and an abrasion along one side of his face that looked like he'd been dragged across rough carpet. He examined himself in the mirror in his bathroom, before judging that all visible wounds could be passed off as from the helicarrier in the first assault – he knew Fury would back him up on that.

The worst he had were a couple of cracked ribs, and those were from when the Hulk had caught him in his fall from the wormhole in the sky.

And speaking of _that_ …

He could recognize the signs of a panic attack trying to creep up on his consciousness, and he knew that he wouldn't be getting much sleep for a long time to come. He remembered the PTSD that had arisen after Afghanistan, and knew somehow instinctively that this would be so much worse than last time.

But he shook himself, pushing all thoughts of the nuke and all that transpired with it from his mind, because he had to go down as Tony Stark in a moment to deal with his new guests.

It had been an impulsive move to invite the other Avengers to the tower. Then again, he was known for impulsive moves, so he supposed Pepper and Rhodey wouldn't be too surprised when they found out.

They had gone out for shawarma after the battle, but after ordering, Tony had realized two things: he suddenly wasn't all that hungry anymore – rather nauseated, actually – and he was wearing the suit, so he wouldn't have been able to eat without revealing his identity, anyway.

That last point was thanks to Rogers, actually. After the Hulk had caught him ( _don't think about it, don't do it_ ), Thor had been about to pull off the mask to make sure that he was alive underneath, when Rogers had stopped him. His reasoning had been that Iron Man was trying to protect his identity for a reason, and until they knew for sure whether the man underneath was alive or dead, they had to respect his wishes to keep his face hidden.

It had been just as well that the Hulk had let out a roar then, startling him awake and leaving him stunned that he was alive and on Earth and _safe_ again.

While at the shawarma joint though, they had all been so tired that half their team had begun to doze off, only Bruce and Thor eating like it was their last meal. It made sense, though – faster metabolisms and all that required them to eat more after expending so much energy. Steve – _Rogers_ – had eaten a lot at first before his fatigue began to catch up with him, and he'd dozed off with his cheek resting on one fist, food still in the other hand. Tony couldn't actually be certain that the captain had swallowed what was in his mouth before dozing off, but oh well. If he started choking, he was certain to wake up or at least make some noise to alert the others to a problem, so he didn't bother worrying about it.

After they'd finished eating was when Tony had opened his mouth and blurted the offer to stay at Stark Tower for a few days. Barton had been the one to lift his head, looking at him and asking if "Stark" would be okay with that.

The voice scrambler in the suit disguised his voice perfectly when he assured them that they would be welcome, especially because SHIELD was housing half the team and surely an actual room would be more welcome than whatever SHIELD could manage to come up with on short notice, seeing as they needed some time to regroup after Loki's attack as well.

Barton was the first one to accept, with Romanoff following after sharing a look with the archer. The others had followed suit directly after, so after Tony had told the owners of the restaurant that Stark would send over money for payment within the hour, they had trooped their way back to the Tower.

After sending the team off to different floors to shower and change into the spare clothes he always kept on the guest floors, he himself had gone up to his own floor with the promise that he – well, Tony Stark – would be down to the common room in an hour, and that he might see them tomorrow.

Now…

Tony blew out a breath, inwardly cursing his impulsiveness. Now it was time to meet the team again.

A mere half hour later, he was cursing his impulsiveness again after he had offered that the team move in to the Tower – and they'd accepted.

 _This ought to be interesting._

…

Natasha had dreaded Clint finding out about Phil's death. Phil was Clint's mentor, the one who had brought him in from a depressing life and showed him that he could have more. Phil and Clint had a relationship even stronger than hers and Phil's, built on trust and over a decade of having each others' backs. Phil had brought Clint in to SHIELD when the archer was just twenty-one, had worked with him when no one else believed in a mercenary going straight. Clint trusted Phil over everyone else – even her. She didn't fault him for it either, because Phil and Clint's bond was something very different from Clint's bond with her.

But even for how much she dreaded Clint finding out about his mentor and friend's death, how much she already ached for the pain that Clint would feel when it finally hit him, how she knew he would tear himself up with guilt over this even though he'd had no control – she hadn't expected that she'd have to be the one to _tell_ him.

But it was there – the comment Clint had made after a night of sleep, where he surprisingly had no dreams at all, being too exhausted to do anything but pass out. And after Clint had said it – _"It's surprising that Phil isn't here yet, though. If not to be in Captain America's presence again, at least to lead the debrief."_ – there was no way that she could just brush it off. She would not – _could_ not – lie to her first soulmate, the one who had proven to her that she was human. Besides the fact that she respected him too much to do that, she knew that it would be breaking Clint's trust. Clint didn't deserve that, especially not after everything else that had happened.

At least they were the only two in the kitchen at the moment – having a floor to themselves definitely had its perks. The first one being that no one else would see what was about to occur.

Clint was pulling orange juice from the already stocked fridge, happily oblivious, and Natasha hated to break that but knew she had to all the same.

"Clint," she said, keeping her voice even.

The man stilled, hearing her tone of voice, before his hand clenched in its grip around the carton and he turned to her with a carefully blank expression on his face. After a moment, his lips tightened, the only outward display of emotion that showed how upset he was.

"He's dead," he said flatly. "Isn't he?"

Natasha paused, before nodding once, fingers smoothing along the handle of her fork as she forcefully kept her expression calm. "It was Loki," she offered.

Clint said nothing, staring at a spot just past her shoulder before nodding once, sharply, and turning back to the fridge, putting the orange juice back without ever having opened it. Natasha said nothing, only silently watching as Clint left the room.

It was only minutes later, when she heard a slight rattling above her head that told her Clint had found his way into the vents, that she finally let her façade drop. She had cared for Phil as well – not as deeply as Clint had, and only for about half as long, but she still mourned that he was gone.

Burying her face in her arms as she bent the top half of her body over the counter, she wondered how they would ever be okay again.

…

"Okay, so I have a few ground rules for staying in the Tower," Tony said, walking into the communal kitchen where he'd had JARVIS tell everyone to gather minutes before. He paused, seeing that a notable member of the team was missing. "Where's Barton?"

"Up here," the archer's voice said above him, and Tony glanced up to one of the grates in the vent. The blond head was barely visible in the darkness up there, but Tony could still recognize the man from their brief interactions.

"Right," Tony accepted with a nod. "Since that's going to be a thing, I'll address that first. Don't go in the vents near my lab – security includes electric currents in the metal, and knockout gas if JARVIS deems that you've gotten too close even with that. I think there are sonics in there too to blast your ears, but that one might not have been installed yet. Other than that, the rest of the vents are fair game.

"Anyway," Tony addressed the rest of them as well. "Very first and most important rule for _all_ of you – no snooping into Iron Man's identity. Hard line there – it's a safety for him as well as everyone else, so I'm not taking any risks. If I, or more importantly JARVIS, thinks you're looking too much into it, you'll have to leave. I mean, it wouldn't be _terrible_ , because I'm sure if you really wanted to I can put you in a nice apartment, but since I live here, and Iron Man is here often enough to live here, you can't live in the Tower where you're so close all the time."

"Iron Man doesn't live here?" the Captain was startled. "But he's a part of the Avengers as much as anyone else, and he's _your_ bodyguard – why wouldn't you offer that he have his own floor as well? You're not exactly short on money."

Tony sighed mentally, outwardly rolling his eyes so that his half-forced contempt couldn't be missed. " _Exactly_ , Cap. He's my _bodyguard_. That's his day job. He just has a fancy suit to do it in, because I'm targeted by higher than average people. And when he's _not_ working, he has his own life to get to. Who wants to live with their boss?"

"But to not even _offer_ …" the Captain said in a reprimanding voice, one that made Tony feel a flare of honest irritation.

"I _did_ offer, Rogers," Tony cut him off. "He declined. Now, are you satisfied that you've done your civic duty to make sure everything is _fair_ here?" He didn't bother waiting for an answer. "Any more questions about Iron Man before we move on?"

"What about his soulmates?" Bruce was the one to speak up in his quiet voice.

Tony tilted his head, not knowing what the scientist was getting at. "What's your question, Doc?"

Bruce glanced at Romanoff before looking back at Tony. "Um…what's your stance on polyamory?"

"In soulmates?" Tony clarified, noticing how every single one of them – except Thor – were tensed like they were preparing for an argument. At Bruce's nod, Tony shrugged and said, "Don't really know what you expect me to say. I guess? I mean, I'm not against them. You do you."

Bruce relaxed slightly, looking relieved, and glanced at Romanoff again before looking at the billionaire once more. "I don't really know how to ask this…"

"Rogers, Barton, Banner, and I are all part of a polyamorous soul bond," Romanoff said bluntly when Bruce hesitated. "And Iron Man is a part of it as well. Will there be an exception allowed that we can know his identity because of that?"

Tony was absolutely _floored_ by this information, because he hadn't even _suspected_. After Afghanistan and getting the arc reactor, he had never seen his soul mark again as his body finally reflected his lacking soul. Thus, he had no reason to suspect that these four were his soulmates, because he had never seen or felt their marks appear. Hell, he didn't even know what they _looked_ like. He hadn't ever expected to actually _meet_ them.

Except…

They didn't know that they were bonded with Tony Stark. They wouldn't _want_ Tony Stark if they ever found out – which they wouldn't. The arrogant playboy who used people without care or remorse and then promptly forgot all about them, the egotistical billionaire who didn't care who got hurt as long as he got what he wanted…no one wanted _him_. They expected Iron Man – the good, clean, and _righteous_ man who had flown a nuke into space with no expectation of coming out of it alive. The man who helped save the world – the man whose courage might even be on par with Captain America, the first superhero of them all.

But Tony Stark couldn't give them that.

Through the ease of long practice growing up, Tony didn't miss a beat as he threw up a mask as carefully constructed as any of his inventions – a mask that showed only surprise and curiosity.

"Well, I certainly wouldn't have expected a bond of _three_ to be living in my Tower, let alone _five_ ," he said interestedly. "I don't think I've ever heard of more than four, actually. JARVIS, make a note – I want to do some research on those statistics."

 _"Of course, Sir."_ JARVIS' voice filtered into the room, and it was a testament to how they were all getting rather used to the unusual that even Rogers didn't look around for the source of the noise.

"It's not five, exactly," Bruce said, looking awkward but not so nervous now that it was clear that Tony wasn't going to react badly to the large pairing. "We still have to meet two more."

Tony allowed his eyebrows to shoot up in surprise. " _Damn_ ," he said feelingly, even while his mind scrambled for how to deal with this. At least it didn't look like anyone had noticed he was stalling. "JARVIS, compile data for every time period for a group larger than four. Anyway," he finally had to answer when he noticed Romanoff's impatiently raised brow and Rogers' irritated expression. "As for Iron Man, I'll…leave that up to him. I'll have to talk to him first, though – see if we can't iron out some wrinkles in our way to make sure everything is alright. So give it a couple of days before you approach it."

Rogers looked grudging at this, while Romanoff nodded once in acceptance and Bruce smiled in thanks. Barton…well, Tony couldn't be sure, because most of his face was covered in shadow, but there were no objections above him, so Tony supposed it was alright.

"Anyway, now that that's out of the way," Tony said with a short clap of his hands, "More rules. I may be a billionaire, but please _try_ to refrain from destroying things in fits of anger or frustration. I have a budget for that – Pepper made me after the fiasco of 2009. I'll tell you the story sometime, but it's unimportant right now."

"We shall endeavor to treat your home with the respect it deserves," Thor proclaimed as promise for all of them. The others nodded wordlessly – it was an easy enough rule to follow.

"Sweet," Tony accepted. "So following that, if you _do_ break something, let JARVIS know. He can deal with a lot of the problems with it, but if he can't he'll come to me. And if JARVIS has to come to me to solve a problem, you'd better hope I don't find you, because he's smarter than I am, so you must have done something truly _terrible_ for him to be unable to undo or fix it."

Bruce snorted slightly. "So he's the Tower mother?" he said tentatively, not sure how the teasing would be received to the man he truly knew hardly anything about.

But Tony only beamed at him happily, glad that someone had got it. " _Exactly_ ," he said expressively. "And just like your mother, don't go disrespecting him. And don't _ever_ refer to him as 'just a computer'; it hurts his feelings."

"It – _he_ – has feelings?" Romanoff was the one to ask what they were all thinking.

Tony looked offended by the very implication that he _wouldn't_. "Of course JARVIS has feelings! He can learn and grow and help you just like any human can; the only thing he _doesn't_ have is a body – and he doesn't want one. It'd be too weird after so much time on a server, and there's a whole slew of other reasons having to do with Skynet that would never happen but that we're taking measures for just in case. And speaking of feelings, his twenty-second birthday is December 17th, so don't forget it, or said feelings will be hurt."

"You want us to give a birthday present to an A.I." Romanoff said flatly.

Tony scoffed. "Of course not – JARVIS doesn't have a body, and wouldn't be able to appreciate anything physical. I'm just saying that you shouldn't _forget_ it.

"Anyway, aside from the brilliance of JARVIS, which you will all be indoctrinated to soon enough, he _will_ make sure that you're safe. And that includes physically _and_ mentally. So that means that no one can be skipping meals around here just because they have lingering PTSD that tells them that they can't. Trust me, been there, done that, and I'm pretty sure I'm still partially deaf in my right ear from Pepper reaming me out after JARVIS got her for help."

"Are you quite positive it is not the volume of your playlist choices that has subjected you to your assumed partial deafness?" JARVIS' voice said far too innocently.

"No, I am quite certain that you and Pepper have sadistic streaks against me, and you have competitions for who can aggravate me further," Tony retorted without pause, and then addressed the other Avengers once more. "So. That being said, if you need psychiatric help, go to JARVIS. It's in his coding that he'll never tell anyone about it – including me – and I'm sure I have enough money for whatever psychiatrist you want. Then again, we all know how aggravating shrinks can be, so you can employ JARVIS as your therapist. Pretty sure that's most of what he does for me anyway is listening to me ramble. He's very good at keeping secrets.

"Further rules – well, they're not so much rules as they are information for your benefit. When you go shopping, take one of the phones with JARVIS programmed into it, and at checkout he can walk you through the payment. It's easier than trying to keep up to date with cards all the time, and he can connect directly to my bank account.

"Anyone who knows what they're doing is welcome to all the floors of R&D for whatever experiments you want – yes, Bruce, that is directed mainly to you. Don't piss off the workers unless they deserve it, and if you're not supposed to be somewhere, JARVIS will be the one to let you know. Thor, before I forget, no summoning Mjolnir to you unless you can see it. I don't want to risk smashed support structures here." Thor nodded in understanding and agreement.

"Hm…" Tony paused, thinking. "I think that's everything I wanted to say."

"Sir, I believe you wanted to discuss the renovations being made to the sixtieth floor," JARVIS reminded him.

"Oh, yes!" Tony's face lit up as he remembered. "Well, that one should take a bit of time, because the penthouse has to be fixed after Loki was smashed into the floor"—his grin showed how that truly pleased him rather than upset him—"but the gym on the sixtieth floor is going to be modified, but I'll need some specifications from you guys. Don't know what distances you'll need for practicing shooting targets, what speed they need to be moving, and the like. Cap, I'll need some samples of your strength for some punching bags that will be harder to break – I definitely heard what you've been subjecting the bags at the SHIELD gym to.

"As for anything else, if you want something, let me know. Except a swimming pool. Or a bathtub. I can pay for a hotel nearby if you want one of those. But anything else you can think of, let me know. I'm basically the Avengers' sponsor now – you can call me Daddy Warbucks. Questions?"

No one had any, so Tony smiled and opened his mouth to say something when JARVIS spoke up again.

"Sir, Miss Potts has returned and is entering the elevator now."

All trace of smile disappeared from Tony's face as he was reminded of what he had to do. Expression tense, he said, "She's back early. Is my alcohol still accounted for?"

"Approximately one third was destroyed in the battle, but the remaining two thirds should be sufficient for your needs."

"Alright, J – send her up to my temp floor; let her know I'll be there in a minute," Tony said, turning from the others without a word.

"Of course, Sir."

"Tony," Bruce said behind him, and he turned slightly to look at his fellow scientist. "Is everything alright?"

Tony gave him a tight smile as he stepped into the elevator that would lead up to the penthouse. "It will be, I hope," he said. "Just some personal problems."

"Well…call me if you need anything," Bruce said.

Tony's smile softened into something more real. "Thanks, Brucie," he said genuinely, before his mask came back up. The elevator closed in front of his face.

Leaning against the wall for a moment, he blew out a breath, rubbing his forehead to fight against an oncoming migraine. He'd been dreading this for two days now, but he couldn't put it off any longer. It would be better coming from him than seeing the soul mark – and he couldn't even be certain that she hadn't seen it yet. But she was his best friend, so he owed this much to her, at least.

"J, how does she look?" Tony asked as the elevator opened and he stepped out into the destroyed penthouse.

"Curious, with a touch of worry," the AI replied promptly.

"Fuck," Tony muttered, going over to the bar.

"I feel it best to point out that you were rather vague in your message for her to return. She may have no idea about her soulmate."

"Yeah – thanks, J," Tony said. It wasn't really that much better. He went to find the best bottle of alcohol he owned – he was certain that they were both going to need it before the night was through.

 **...**

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **P.S. I'm having a bit of a dilemma with this fic. With some of them in the seven-some (what word am I even supposed to use here?), I definitely want them as romantic soulmates. But the others...not as much? I'm thinking of having all of the seven in the bond have something like an open relationship with each other, but some of them are platonic soulmates instead. Like, Bucky and Steve are romantic, but maybe Bucky is romantic with Wanda and Steve is platonic? And maybe Clint is romantic with Natasha but not Bruce, who Natasha is romantic with? Does this make sense? Anyway, let me know what you think of the idea - a mixture of romantic and platonic, or all romantic with everyone in the seven? And if you like the mixture, who do you want paired with who? The only ones definitely romantic at this point are Bucky and Steve, but the others are up to interpretation and where I decide to take it.**

 **Your thoughts?**


	8. 82 Percent Chance of Success

**Firstly, after a few reviews on the last chapter, I feel that I have to preface the whole Coulson-didn't-die issue before I dive into this chapter. I have a lot of people asking me if it will be the same as how he survived in Agents of Shield, and all I can say is "sort of". I've never actually seen the show, and don't have any plans to, and so anything that I write is just what I've picked up from reading fanfiction. So all I know about Coulson living is that he got some sort of alien blood to keep him alive, and if I'm remembering right, it was called Project T.A.H.I.T.I. That's it. That's all I know about it. So don't expect me to keep up with AoS canon – it probably won't be the same, and I'm just guessing where it should go according to my own understanding.**

 **Anyway, that's all I have to say about that. Thank you to everyone who left responses on the last chapter! You may have noticed that I added "Romantic Soulmates" and "Platonic Soulmates" in the tags, because I decided to do both. Which is great, because it's what most people wanted anyway, and your opinions and explanations for them made it so much easier to decide! Thanks so much for all your guys' help!**

 **Also, I recognize that I'm giving a lot of attention to Tony here, in comparison to the others. Although I hadn't intended to go it from his POV so much more, I will not apologize. However, I will add a "Tony-centric" tag because it seems the polite thing to do here. :)**

 **So, without further ado, here is Chapter 8!**

 **…**

Pepper was sitting on the couch, flicking through her StarkPad when Tony stepped out of the elevator with alcohol in hand. He could see her typing out notes on the schedule from where he stood, but as soon as he came in, she tossed it aside and rose to meet him.

He was completely surprised when she immediately enfolded him in a crushing hug, but upon reflection realized he really should have seen it coming.

"Tony, you stupid, _stupid_ man – don't ever scare me like that again!" she cried, pulling back and socking him in the shoulder. Her face was angry, but he could see relief in her watery eyes. "All I could do was watch the TV as you went into that damn wormhole, and I thought you weren't going to come out…"

"Pep," Tony cut her off for the dual reason that he wanted to calm her down and that her words were reminding him of those frightening images he held in his mind. He put his free hand on her shoulder and said, "I have some…bad news."

"What? What is it?" Pepper demanded, and her eyes flicked to the bottle of alcohol in the hand at his side. "It must be bad if you think it requires alcohol. What can I do? I haven't heard anything from SI, so they must have talked to you. Unless – is it about SHIELD? And the Avengers? JARVIS mentioned that you'd invited them to stay here…"

"Pepper," Tony cut her off again from her rambling. "Just…hear me out, alright?"

Pepper nodded wordlessly, gazing into his face, and worry crossed her own eyes as she took in his expression.

"You…" Tony started, and then paused. Now that he was here, he hadn't the faintest clue how to tell his best friend that her soulmate had died.

"Loki," he said, leading her back over to the couch and guiding her to sit down next to him. "He was… On the helicarrier, he had some of the people he'd brainwashed coming for him. It was part of his plan to get caught in Stuttgart. And he was in this…prison…but he had some SHIELD agents on his side…"

"Tony, please just get to the point – you're not making any sense," Pepper said worriedly.

"Loki got out," Tony exhaled. "And Phil went in alone…"

"Oh, god," Pepper put a hand to her mouth, a different kind of worry overtaking her features. "So, what hospital is he in? Or is he in SHIELD medical? I need to see him if he is – you can insult and argue with anyone who stands in your way; I don't care who you offend at this point, but I just need…"

"Pepper," Tony interrupted. "He's not – he didn't make it. He's dead."

Pepper blinked at him, confusion crossing her face now alongside the worry. "No, he's not," she said, shaking her head. "He's just hurt – he's not dead."

"No," Tony sighed in the face of her denial. "He is. Loki got to him, and there wasn't anyone…"

" _No_ , Tony," Pepper said, grabbing his hand and squeezing tightly to get his attention. "He's _not_ dead!"

"I'm sorry," Tony said, and Pepper released his hand while he continued speaking. "If I'd known that he was going alone, I would've tried to do something – at least get word to another agent that he needed help…" He slowly trailed off, eyes catching sight of what she was directing him to. She had unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt, and now her soul mark was visible – specifically, the one she'd shown him before that displayed Coulson's mark – the blue silhouette of an eagle on a black background. Now, the mark was slightly greyed, like a film was over it.

"I remember how you said sometimes that your yellow mark with the star sometimes looked faded," Pepper explained. "But it always went back to normal. I don't know exactly what it means, of course, but I _do_ know that he's _not dead_."

Tony was stunned, but his brain quickly caught up to what she was saying. In a moment, his remorse and sadness was gone, and he couldn't decide whether to feel angry or happy. He eventually decided on happy – he could go be angry at Fury later.

"Pep, you have _no_ idea how glad that makes me," he exhaled, smile breaking across his face. She returned the smile and began buttoning up her shirt again as he continued. "Are you against _celebratory_ alcohol?"

"Of course not," Pepper replied. "But why don't we wait until we figure out what's actually happened to him before celebrating?"

"Right," Tony nodded once in agreement. "J, dig deeper into SHIELD's files. I want to know exactly why Fury is being more dickish than usual in letting everyone continue to believe that Agent is dead."

…

Clint watched from the slats in the vent as the Avengers gathered again the morning after Stark had called them all together the night before. Stark himself was already there, standing with hands fidgeting in front of the oven, waiting for Bruce and Steve to arrive. Clint had been the first one there, and the only one to see how the CEO of Stark Industries, Virginia Potts, had left Stark before the others had gathered.

On any other day, he might have been curious as to why she was there, and why she gave Stark that supportive look before proclaiming that she had to leave for a board meeting, and why Stark had called them so soon after their first meeting…but today he just didn't care. He couldn't bring himself to.

His night of sleep had been terrible – hardly any sleep at all, and each time he finally caught a few winks, he was startled back into wakefulness by the image of glowing blue or Coulson's condemning face as Clint shot him through the heart with one of his own arrows. After several hours of this, he had left the bed so that Natasha at least could get some sleep, and he'd been in the vents ever since.

He'd seen as Rogers had awakened before dawn and left the tower in running clothes, had observed as Thor had awakened not long after the Captain had left to gaze out the high windows as the sun rose. They were bringing Loki back later that day, and Thor would be going with him as his escort and jailer. He could understand how Thor would be hurting and wanting to be alone, so it really hadn't been too difficult to decide to leave him to it. He assumed that's what Rogers wanted as well at the moment, to be alone. He was all too happy to oblige. It seemed that that's how most of the team dealt with trauma anyway, because he hadn't heard from anyone until JARVIS – the A.I. that ran the tower – had told him quietly that the team was meeting in the kitchen at eight o' clock. Seeing as Clint was doing nothing else, he'd opted to stay and see if it would be worth his time.

Rogers appeared last, not out of breath from his run but clearly still warm if his sweaty skin and half-soaked tee was anything to go by. Clint was surprised – Rogers had been running for almost three hours if he was still sweaty. But then again, he amended mentally, Rogers had the serum, and no one could ever be certain what the full extent of its capabilities were. He'd have to remember not to be surprised by anything when it came to Rogers in the future.

"Okay, so I know you're all taking Loki back to Asgard in like three hours," Stark said without preamble once they were all gathered. "And Iron Man is on his way here now, so he should be in time for that, and I sent the message ahead so he wouldn't be surprised…anyway, considering everything, I figured after I had confirmation I should just come out and say it."

"Confirmation of what?" Rogers was the one to ask.

"Um…Coulson is alive."

Clint jerked his head up, the words catching his attention but not knowing whether or not he should believe them and if they were true.

"What?" Natasha said flatly, and Clint was pretty sure he was the only one to hear how pissed she was. Of course her first assumption was that it was a joke or a lie. Clint was leaning in that direction as well, but he remained silently watchful as Stark looked uncharacteristically uncertain and uncomfortable.

"Well, I didn't believe it either," Stark hurried to say. "Except – well, you're friends with him, right? He wasn't just your handler? So, did he ever introduce you to his first soulmate?"

"He said her name was Pepper," Natasha said.

"Well, it isn't, actually," Stark said, looking awkward. "Pepper's just the name I gave her because the first time I met her she didn't recognize me, thought I was a kidnapper, and pepper sprayed me in the face."

"Pepper spray?" Rogers muttered uncomprehendingly to himself. Clint noted that Banner leaned over to quietly explain to him what pepper spray was as Stark went on.

"Anyway," he said, "I hired her right after, but her legal name is Virginia. Just me, Happy, and Agent call her Pepper. So last night when she showed up I was all set to bear the bad news that her soulmate had died, but her soul mark wasn't actually that faded grey color it is when people are dead. It was just sort of faded, like you were looking at it through a dirty window. So…Agent's not dead." He shrugged a bit and said, "I know it hit some people harder than others, so I just…thought you guys should know."

Clint shoved the grate in the vent to the side and glared down at Stark. "You better not be fucking with me," he warned, but already he knew that the billionaire wasn't. As brash as the man was, he wasn't unnecessarily cruel, and there was no sign of lying even then.

"I still had JARVIS in SHIELD's files," Stark said without affirming or denying Clint's words – not that they really needed acknowledgement. "So I had him go searching for what happened to the man, and suffice it to say that he needs our help as soon as we get Loki back to Asgard."

Clint's focus sharpened, and he dropped down abruptly from the vent to stand in front of Stark. "What's wrong with him?"

"Basically he's got alien blood keeping him alive," Stark replied promptly and without question, which Clint was very grateful for. "It should work, but right now SHIELD is keeping him under lock and key, under the guise of making sure he comes out alright, but in reality they're keeping him sedated."

"Why?" Rogers demanded sharply, just as intensely focused as Clint was.

"I can make a few guesses," Stark said honestly. "First of which is because he's supposed to be the Avengers' handler, and without that the team is more likely to be divided. Of course, they didn't expect Tony Stark to step up and bring everyone together, but that's irrelevant at this point. Another idea is that this alien blood thing hasn't ever been done before, and they want to do studies on Agent to see if it's safe for others to use in case of serious injury. Then there's also that he's the handler of Hawkeye and Black Widow – without him, you two aren't as safe at SHIELD, so they're using him to get to one or both of you. It could also be because he himself is rather powerful and with a lot of contacts, and getting rid of him can uproot the entire tree – or at least a very large chunk of it. There's also the fact that he and the doctor in charge of his care have butted heads with each other on previous cases in the past, and said doctor just really doesn't want to deal with the guy. Honestly, there are so many possible reasons why they're making sure he's incapacitated, but I think the main thing we should be concerned about here is how to get him _out_."

"Where would we put him, though?" Banner asked practically.

"Floor fifty-two," Stark replied swiftly. "It's the tower's medical floor, and it's stocked with everything needed for things from open heart surgery to giving birth. And JARVIS watches that floor especially carefully and the only floors that have more security are the Avengers floors, so he'll be completely safe from anyone who might try and hurt him."

"Let's go, then!" Clint said urgently. "What's the plan? I assume you have one already?"

"Of course I already have a plan," Stark said, though he wasn't condescending as one might expect him to be with his words. Actually, he looked rather surprised – though whether it was that Clint might have assumed otherwise or that Clint was acceding to his command, he didn't know. "But first we need to get Loki off the planet – Iron Man should be here in about an hour for that. And then we'll get to rescuing Agent from SHIELD's clutches – I've already got Pepper started on Phase 1."

"And Phase 2?" Clint said impatiently.

"Well, for that we're going to need some things first. Romanoff, I know you're resourceful. Can you get a bakery delivery truck here without anyone finding out?"

"You insult me," Natasha said dryly, though Clint could see her amusement as well as hope.

"Alright, and Rogers, I need to fix up your Captain America costume in the next hour, so I'll need you in my lab ASAP so I can get all the measurements right as I go. It'll be a slop job, and I can make a new one later on, but we only have so much time today. Thor, since you'll be back on Asgard when we go to get Agent, I need you to find a bunch of food for Ste-Rogers because he's just been running for three hours and he won't have time to get some chow while he's helping me with the suit, and then we'll be seeing Loki off. So you're essentially on Feed Captain duty so that he doesn't collapse. Barton, you're going to be in stealth mode with Romanoff so you can get Agent out of there while we deal with everything else. And Brucie, I hope you're feeling aggravated."

"Are you sure this plan – whatever it is – is going to work?" Rogers asked him, not confrontationally, but doubtfully.

Stark scoffed. "Of course not. No one is _ever_ sure a plan is going to work – you'd have to be psychic for that. But we have an 82% chance of success, and those are better odds than I had of living into my twenties. I say we go for it."

 **...**

 **Sorry, but I won't be showing the actual rescue in here. Maybe one day, if I ever feel up to it, I'll write a oneshot about it, but for now there's going to be a bit of a time skip the next chapter. Hope you enjoyed this one! Thanks for reading!**


	9. Pink & Purple Robots

Surprisingly, everything had gone off without a hitch. Coulson was back safely with them, having stayed on floor 52 as promised until he was well enough to move into the floor set up for him and Pepper months beforehand for when they were both in New York. With the alien blood, the agent was already walking around two and a half weeks later, albeit with some slowness. Still, for someone who had been impaled less than an inch away from his heart, that was some pretty good progress.

Pepper had helped a lot with that progress, going so far as to postpone and even cancel some meetings with SI so that she could be there to help her soulmate. Tony suspected most of the reason that Coulson got better so quickly was because he didn't want to inconvenience Pepper – not that it _was_ an inconvenience, but it wasn't odd that the SHIELD agent who was usually so independent would feel that way. Having Hawkeye and the Black Widow fussing over him in their own ways certainly opened his eyes to how much he was cared for as well, and for such a private person that was undoubtedly uncomfortable.

With Pepper having to put SI on the backburner for a few weeks, Tony stepped up to help her for the things that couldn't be brushed aside. She advised him on some PR after the Battle of Manhattan, as the news was calling it, but otherwise Tony was the one on the phone with board members and in front of the cameras to assure people that the aliens were gone and that, at least for now, they were safe. Stark Industries would continue, business as usual, excepting the help they were putting forth to get New York City back to normal as quickly as possible.

Truthfully, Tony was glad that he had SI to worry about – it distracted him from the happenings going on within the top floors of his tower.

It had only been just under three weeks, and individually each person kept to themselves, but Tony could see the slow acceptance of each other as soulmates happening right in front of him whenever he came across any two in the room together.

And…he was jealous.

He could've done it, when Clint was finally the one to approach Iron Man about being soulmates with the other four. He could've taken off the helmet, revealed who he was, and shown them that Tony Stark could be good, too – _heroic_ , even.

Except that then he would have nothing. After his identity was revealed, they would all know that Tony Stark couldn't possibly be theirs, because surely their soulmate would have a _soul_ , wouldn't he? And Tony Stark had no soul – hadn't, really, for longer than he knew. It was just more readily apparent now – it showed on the outside now rather than just within, concealed by a guise of rich, womanizing asshole.

So when Clint asked if Iron Man would be willing to reveal his identity just to his soulmates, Tony – _Iron Man_ – had simply refused. Said that it was a security risk, that he didn't believe in soulmates anyway, so what was the point?

The hurt that had shadowed across Clint – _Barton's_ – eyes had almost physically pained him, because even if he hardly knew the guy, in another life he still would have been his soulmate. And some part of him cared, at least a little bit, about making sure the archer was happy. And his words were the ones that had put that look on the former mercenary's face.

But then, before he could even apologize for his admittedly blunt words, Barton's eyes went steely with determination. He'd declared, "I'm going to make you believe in it – that you deserve to be cared for and have soulmates like anyone else. Don't bother trying to stop us."

"Us?" Tony had been unable to keep himself from repeating.

And Barton had given him a flat, somewhat disbelieving look, and said, "Do you really think any of us are going to settle for _not_ having a part of their soul?"

There'd been nothing to say to that, really, because even as much as Tony felt weary with it, it was the truth. With the possible exception of Banner, the other three were exceptionally stubborn and sure to keep pushing until they had their way. And at the moment, their way would be getting Tony – getting _Iron Man_ – on board with the rest of them in their little soulmate club.

Thankfully, Romanoff and Barton weren't especially brash or outlandish in their trying to get Iron Man with them more often. That may have been because of the whole shitstorm with Coulson, but Tony couldn't help feeling like they were biding their time – inching forward before they would pounce suddenly and without warning.

Steve – _Rogers_ , dammit, he really needed to stop thinking of them by their first names – hadn't actually been especially demanding. He was trying to talk more with Iron Man, but it seemed halfhearted at best. Most of the time JARVIS reported that he was whaling into all of the punching bags available – clearly the man was still struggling with acclimating to the twenty-first century. And Tony felt for him, he really did, but he couldn't risk trying to befriend him as Tony, and Iron Man he was more formal with – probably because they'd, you know, fought aliens together and Rogers probably viewed him more as a fellow soldier than an actual friend. But what did Tony know?

Gradually, as Coulson got better and more mobile, Pepper started going back to her normal work at SI, leaving Tony floundering for something to do. (Not that he would _ever_ say he was floundering. It was an awful word, anyway.) Eventually he sprang on the idea to improve his – Iron Man's – teammates' weapons.

After he had made better arrows for Barton, a better and more durable uniform for Rogers (and a lot less garish but still patriotic), improved Widow's Bites for Romanoff, and some stretchy pants for Bruce (still pending experimentation next time he went big and green), a mere eight days had passed and he still felt like he needed to do more to fill his time.

After yet another nightmare after he'd accidentally fallen asleep for a few minutes, Tony latched onto the idea to continue improving his Iron Man armor. After all, if he reached a point where he wouldn't have to worry about things like being in space in his armor, then he would have no more nightmares. Simple as that. After all, in Tony Stark's book, impossible was only a word.

…

The call to assemble came a month after the Battle of Manhattan, exactly to the day. Steve was just washing up his lunch dishes when JARVIS alerted him to a situation downtown that needed the Avengers' help.

Truthfully, Steve was grateful for it. He would feel horribly guilty if he found out that it was a serious situation with possibility of people's deaths, but right then he had to let out a breath of relief that he could finally _do_ something.

It wasn't exactly that there was nothing to do. It was that the things for him to do just seemed so… _pointless_.

He'd tried drawing, as he had done often before he'd awakened in the twenty-first century, but after every pair of eyes became Bucky's soulful greys, and every smile tugged unevenly in one corner in the exact way that Bucky's did, he couldn't do it any longer.

He felt bad, thinking about Bucky so much and mourning for him when three other soulmates were ready and willing to start a relationship with him, but he couldn't help it. When Barton had explained to him Iron Man's response to 'the soulmate issue', Steve had promised to try showing he was welcome…but he hadn't really followed through on it. Sure, he talked to Iron Man, but honestly he didn't really care to have a relationship with five other people if that most important sixth wasn't in it too. He couldn't bring himself to think of the others that way when he and Bucky had talked for _so long_ about how they could be happy all in a group of soulmates together. How they'd both promised each other that even in a group of seven, they would always love each other, their _firsts_ , the most.

He could even see how the others were so cautious of each other, so nervous that they would push the others away with the wrong reaction, and he couldn't help being glad of having emotionally constipated soulmates. It meant they wouldn't try too much to get close to him, too afraid of being pushed away.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Romanoff and Barton had known each other as the others' soulmate for a while, so they were comfortable with each other and could frequently be seen with their heads together. Banner was jittery, but for the past couple of days he had been working with Stark on some experiment or another down in the R&D labs. Steve suspected that Banner was genuine in his friendship with the resident billionaire, but that a lot of the reason he was with him so much was to get closer to Iron Man. In any case, none of the other three (four, if you counted Iron Man) were actually _avoiding_ each other, but they weren't going out of their way to include the other, either. It made it easier for Steve to avoid _them_ , at least.

He shook himself from his thoughts as he stripped out of his street clothes to put on his uniform. After shoving his legs into the pants of the uniform, he paused as he stared down at the soul mark on his chest. There was only one more missing, but that's not what caught his eye. The yellow mark with the red star in the center – it was just as bright as all the colors around it.

Swallowing, Steve shoved his arms into the uniform a bit more forcefully than strictly necessary, and then zipped it up the back. He didn't have time to wonder how his love's mark could still have not turned grey.

…

When Natasha first saw the things attacking Central Park, she almost laughed. It's a good thing she didn't though, because as soon as she stepped down onto the sidewalk, one of the robots that looked like tiny Iron Mans (Men? Iron Men? Whatever.) – if Iron Man was a lot bulkier and purple and pink instead of red and gold – blasted a gauntlet similar to Iron Man's toward her face, releasing a fiery blast of blue light that would have blown through her head if she hadn't ducked in time.

If asked, she couldn't have guessed exactly what the tiny little robots were trying to accomplish. They were probably about the size of a soda can, but there were easily a few hundred of them that beat upon statues and trees and any person that got in their way. When they felt cornered, they began blasting with the repulsors so similar to Iron Man's that if they weren't the atrocious combination of colors that they were, Natasha might have suspected Stark of building an army for himself that got a little out of hand.

But, even though they were small and didn't seem especially malicious, they were doing a lot of damage that they had to be destroyed. At least that one was easy enough – Natasha found that if she hit them hard enough, they buckled like tin foil. Clint shot at them with his arrows, Rogers tossed his shield at several of them at once, and Bruce stayed back, seeing as a Hulk would do more damage at this point than the large army of tiny Iron Men. Iron Man…well, the little robots didn't actually seem to be interested in attacking him the way that they were the rest of them. Maybe they saw him as a friend. In any case, the feelings clearly weren't returned as the larger Iron Man shot his own repulsor beams at them with relish.

And Red – she wasn't actually trying to smash them like everyone else – she actually seemed to be _tearing_ them apart from the inside with strands of scarlet lights that floated from the ends of her fingers.

Wait – what the fuck?

Without pausing in her own destruction of the little robots, she glanced over to get a better look at the random girl that had shown up to help them. And yes, just as she thought she'd seen, the lights floated from the girl's fingers and into a few robots at once, before the robots jerked and stalled and finally crumbled apart. And now Natasha noticed that the girl's eyes were glowing with the same red, a testament to the magic she was using.

She might have seen the girl as an enemy, except that the destruction of her own robots clearly proclaimed that she was on their side – though Natasha would hold off judgment, because the reason for that could be wildly different from the Avengers'.

Just then, a boy appeared next to the girl – about the same age, perhaps nineteen or twenty – and Natasha recognized them as twins at the same time she wondered how he could have literally just _appeared_ like he did. He said something to her and she instantly replied. He made another comment – probably something snarky if his expression was anything to go by – and then he was gone again.

"Who're the enhanced?" Clint's voice sounded in the comm in her ear. "They friendlies?"

"Holding off judgement with this one," Natasha gritted as she spun a kick into four robots at once, sending them crumbling into a tree. She made sure they were down before moving to the next bot shooting toward her.

Her distraction though had caused another little bot to be able to sneak up behind her while she battled the repulsor-happy one in front of her. She heard it, but she already knew she'd been too slow when she spun around to face it.

However, she didn't have to brace herself for a blast to the face, because it was as she was turning around that the very sneaky robot about to blast her got blasted itself. The tendrils of red smoke coming from it testified who was responsible for saving her, and she gave a quick wave of thanks in the young woman's direction before she had to deal with the next tiny Iron Man.

"I'm leaning toward friendly, though," she shared her thoughts back to Clint, as well as the rest of the Avengers.

Just then, all of the robots halted their movements, stopping their attacks and dropping lifelessly where they were in a way that was reminiscent to the way the Chitauri had collapsed when their planet had been destroyed a month previous. All of the flying Iron Men dropped from whatever height they were at, and several crumbled like squished soda cans when they hit the ground.

"Got it, guys," Iron Man's voice sounded in the comms. "Stark hacked into their network and shut them down, so we're about good now." A moment later, Stark's own voice came through when he said, "I'd just like to know who made these atrocities – and more importantly, why they colored them pink and purple. Honestly, red and gold was the color choice for a _reason_ , most important of which was so that it wouldn't look like it was created by a little girl."

Natasha rolled her eyes, about to respond when something else caught her eye.

It was the brother who had returned, this time with another girl that didn't look anything like him and who, if Natasha had to guess, was the one responsible for said mini Iron Man robots. She looked guilty and scared, but not malicious. She was clearly just in her teens, likely still in high school. Natasha sighed and said, "Looks like one enhanced caught our culprit."

"And dammit, she _is_ a little girl," Stark complained. "At least this explains the color choice."

"I'm sorry!" the girl burst out as soon as Iron Man dropped down in front of her. The boy continued to hold her tightly by the arm so that she couldn't get away, but she appeared to have no intentions of trying to run now that she was surrounded by the Avengers and two more enhanced individuals. "I didn't think that they would go crazy – I wasn't trying to hurt anyone!"

"What was the point of all this, then?" Iron Man said, sounding serious and slightly annoyed.

"It's so stupid!" the girl practically wailed. "I was just trying to make helper bots, and they just started multiplying from the mainframe – like in that Santa Clause movie, with Tim Allen, and it kept multiplying the giant nutcracker soldiers? And they wouldn't listen to me and I couldn't shut off the whole thing before it crashed from the overload of making too many, and then they got away and came…here. The only thing I could gauge was that they identify with their kind, so I was trying to make another one, but just like a simple RC car that I can direct them away and fix whatever could be fixed. Speedy here came and got me before I could work it out."

"Why did you make them all look like Iron Man?" Rogers said sternly, stepping forward.

Unexpectedly, the girl flushed at the question and looked away from all of them. "Well, because Iron Man is the coolest."

"You have good taste," Iron Man said, and Natasha could practically hear the smirk in his voice. "But why would you make them these pink and purple atrocities?"

"Well, I didn't think anyone else would _see_ them," the girl mumbled embarrassedly.

Iron Man sighed at the answer. "What's your name, kid?"

"I'm seventeen – I'm not a kid," the girl snapped seeming automatically, before she visibly backed down slightly and answered, "Felicity."

"Why aren't you in school?" Clint cut in curiously. "It's the middle of the week."

"I graduated last term," the girl said grudgingly.

"And college was out of the question?" Clint responded rhetorically – more of a throwaway comment than anything, really.

Felicity sighed and rolled her eyes slightly. "I graduated _college_ last term," she stressed.

Iron Man was now openly and obviously evaluating her. After a moment, he said, "SHIELD is going to deal with you, because your robots _did_ cause damage to city property. But considering that it was an accident, they'll probably let you off with fines and a warning. After you get out, come to Stark Industries if you'd like a job."

The girl lit up with excitement. " _Really_?" she squealed as SHIELD agents approached.

"Stark's interested in you," Iron Man stated. "Better that you're under his eye so there's less chance of property damage, too."

"Thank you so much!" Felicity gushed even as an agent pulled her away from the boy and began handcuffing her. "I'll be there as soon as I can!"

After the girl had left and SHIELD began getting people on cleaning up the mess, they all turned their attention to the enhanced siblings.

"So," Clint was the one to say. "Who are you?"

…

 **I was trying to think of something that could be attacking, and I figured I might as well do something like in AoU to introduce Wanda. Hence the robots that look like Iron Man. But I didn't want them looking especially evil, so purple and pink. There.**

 **Anyway. WANDA! XD**


	10. Operation Coconut

**Hello! I'm so sorry for the delay (wow, it's been over a year) in posting this. If you're following me on AO3, you'll see I was having some emotional and mental things that I was working through. As it's been so long since I've even thought about this fic, it took some work to get the couple thousand words I have here. So, it's kind of a teaser, but I'm slowly but surely working through my block and the next chapter will definitely be longer. I'm just dipping my toes in the water at the moment.**  
 **Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this and continue to read this! I hope you like seeing things from Wanda's point of view...**  
 **Also, please read the end note!**

* * *

Wanda could see into each of their minds, and she knew they were suspicious of her and Pietro, but also cautiously optimistic. She wasn't offended by it – she knew that in their shoes, she would likely react the same way.

The thing was, she hadn't been actively _searching_ their minds – not until she caught the stray thoughts coming from Iron Man – except that the thoughts were Tony Stark's.

Seeing into one's mind was an odd experience. Because of how quickly the mind worked, she wasn't really _reading_ someone's mind so much as catching the highlights and feelings of a particular person at the moment. She could see images, things that someone else was seeing or something someone was remembering. It was only when she went actively searching that she could read what someone wasn't thinking at the moment, but things they'd experienced and thought in the past. Generally she tried not to invade someone else's privacy in such a way – not the least of which because it could be used as a weapon inside someone's own mind.

The thing with Tony Stark was that he was _different_ – he _thought_ differently from everyone else. Rather than the thoughts being too quick to process, leaving Wanda only seeing impressions and feelings, he had multiple thoughts all at once, working in tandem with one another. With him, it was more like he was actually _speaking_ – if it were possible to say twelve different things at once, each on their own topic. It was a low hum, but his voice was easily recognized.

So, when she heard Iron Man's thoughts, but instead heard Tony Stark's voice, she made the quick connection that Tony Stark _was_ Iron Man. Rather than the generally believed statement that Stark had built the first Iron Man suit to escape his kidnappers, then built a more sophisticated one for a bodyguard due to PTSD rendering him incapable of using the armor again, there was never any bodyguard to begin with. It was all Stark.

Wanda had been tentative in her thoughts about being Stark's soulmate. Just because they shared souls didn't mean that she automatically forgave him for her parents' deaths – or could let go of the trauma associated with the following days. It was only _because_ she now knew that they were soulmates that she had been willing to try, to give him at least a chance at redeeming himself. Pietro was only refraining from violent reaction toward the billionaire because of respect and love for her. She knew that as soon as she okayed it, he could immediately kill Stark where he stood.

Now though, knowing that Tony Stark and Iron Man were one and the same, her estimation of him rose. Even though before, Iron Man was associated with Stark, she'd had to grudgingly admit that Iron Man did good. Iron Man _was_ a hero – selfless and concerned for the welfare of everyone, regardless of gender, race, nationality, or orientation. Iron Man, while still Tony Stark's bodyguard, went out of his way to protect _everyone_. Hell, he'd flown a nuke into space to save New York.

Now, realizing that it was Stark whom she'd had thoughts of being so selfless and heroic…her worldview once again changed.

But, upon realizing his true identity, she did a quick skim through the minds of the closest Avengers – Hawkeye and the woman (Black Widow, she realized a moment later) – and made a few more discoveries.

None of the others knew that Iron Man was Tony Stark. But they still all thought that Iron Man was their soulmate. And they were all soulmates with each other.

"My name is Wanda," Wanda started, mind racing. "This is my brother, Pietro. We came from Sokovia. We had to see Iron Man."

"Why?" the Widow said bluntly, thoughts suspicious.

"He came to Sokovia a couple of months ago," Wanda responded. "It wasn't his destination, so he didn't stay long, but it was long enough for his mark to appear on my chest. It was the first one, so I had to come."

"How many more are you expecting?" Hawkeye questioned with a cocked eyebrow.

Seeing how the archer thought to test the truthfulness of her words, Wanda replied promptly with, "Five." She decided not to mention how technically it was one, having met the rest of them now, because she didn't want them to know immediately how she, a perfect stranger, could read everything they were thinking were she to try. That was certainly not the best way to gain the trust of these people.

"Think Stark will let them move in?" Hawkeye directed to Iron Man with a tilted head.

Iron Man said nothing though, staring at Wanda, and, knowing his identity, she couldn't resist the urge to read his true thoughts on the matter. As soon as she focused, the man's thoughts grew louder and more clear.

 _…be harder to hide now._

 _I'm not soulmate material._

 _(…no soul…)_

 _I can't._

 _Why_ _ **now**_ _?_

 _…she can just be with the others; I can't destroy…_

The guilt and self-loathing that she could feel from him practically sent her to her knees, but through sheer force of willpower she remained standing and pulled her mind away from the pain enshrouding his. Abruptly she found herself – not _forgiving_ him, but _wanting_ to. Wanting to reach a point where she could give him comfort with absolutely no ill feelings toward him.

"Iron Man?" the Captain prompted when the pause grew too long.

Stark seemed to snap out of it then, and came right back with, "Sure, of course. It's not like he doesn't have the room or the money." He tilted his head slightly like he was listening to something – or some _one_ , Wanda realized when she caught wind of his thoughts. He was pretending that Stark was talking to him from the Tower. A moment later, Iron Man nodded once. "I won't quote his exact words," he said wryly, voice light like Stark had said something particularly amusing and/or insulting, "But he said yes. Feel free to make yourselves at home. You'll have to stay on a guest floor for a week or so while contractors come and design your room, but it should be fine."

"Please express our thanks to him," Wanda said gratefully, mind spinning with how to deal with this new situation they'd found themselves in. Pietro shifted slightly next to her, startled by the genuine gratitude he detected in her voice, but he didn't say anything right then. Even with the conscious trying to stay out of his thoughts, she could feel his emotions constantly, and she could detect his confusion – but also the trust he put in her.

"Sure, sure, no problem," Iron Man waved it off. "Till then though, I'm starved, and in need of food. I'll catch you all later." With a wave, he shot off into the sky, disappearing into the distance.

"Well, Iron Man's got the right idea," the one called Hawkeye was the first one to speak after the armored man's departure. "Anyone else wanna go for gyros?"

There was a murmur of approval from the others, and Wanda and Pietro found themselves swept up along with it, and before they knew it they were seated at a table in the back of a Greek restaurant a few blocks over that Hawkeye had insisted provided "the best gyros outside of Greece". The table was filled with food that the Hulk – now an unassuming man in glasses – was the one to dig into first, closely followed by the Captain.

They were a full five minutes into eating before anyone said anything.

"So," Hawkeye said, talking around the lamb and flatbread stuffed in his cheeks. He looked around the table at everyone else, looking a bit nervous. "I figure no one else is going to say it."

"It would make some sense to wait till they're settled a bit more," Bruce offered, pausing his eating only to say that before turning his attention 100% back to the half-eaten gyro in his hands.

"Fuck that," Hawkeye argued, only slightly belligerently.

"Clint," Black Widow said in a slight warning voice.

"No, Tasha," Hawkeye – Clint – said. "This is _important_ , and it's not like she's not going to figure out something is up soon enough."

"We would appreciate a lack of secrets," Pietro said, and Wanda thought only Widow was the one to detect the hint of steel in his voice, as she stilled momentarily before looking back at Clint. But perhaps she was underestimating them, because she saw the Hulk pause briefly in his chewing before he continued as normal, and the Captain's eyes flicked a bit up to her brother before he looked back at his gyro.

"There we are," Clint said smugly, brushing flour off of his hands. He looked around at the rest of his teammates, looking for approval from them, it seemed, though he probably wasn't going to keep quiet about it even if there was disapproval from every single one of them. Well. Maybe not the Widow. They had a deeper bond, the two of them. They'd known each other longer. "And it's going to affect both of them when…"

"The rest of us are soulmates, too," the Captain was the one to say, the words sounding sharp as he bit them out with some difficulty. "Natasha, Clint, Bruce, me, Iron Man, and you. Iron Man has no interest in being a part of it. He won't give up his identity, either."

" _What?_ " Pietro breathed, shocked for his sister. Wanda's eyes were wide, pretending astonishment at the information as well, even though she knew already.

"Iron Man doesn't believe in soulmates," Clint cut in, ignoring Pietro's exclamation. "So the rest of us are trying to get closer to him, _make_ him believe in us and let us get to know him. The _real_ him, not just Iron Man."

"Why doesn't he believe in them?" Wanda demanded, affecting shock. "He has a mark, doesn't he?"

The Widow was the one to nod. "Definitely," she said. "Our marks wouldn't have appeared otherwise. Also, you may have noticed that the mark corresponding with his bears more than a passing resemblance to the reactor powering the Iron Man suit. He identifies very strongly with the armor."

"We don't really know all the details," Clint explained. "But he knows that we're trying to get close to him."

"Is he dating someone else?" Pietro was, surprisingly, the one to ask next. Apparently he'd connected some dots in his head and decided to play along in this façade.

Natasha tilted her head a bit. "A thought I had considered," she allowed. "The problem is that it's very difficult to get things out of Iron Man. He mostly shows up to fight and then disappears at the end. But it would be something that would make sense. If he's in love with someone else – someone who's _not_ his soulmate – of course he wouldn't want to be in a relationship with six others."

"But he doesn't have to be involved with us romantically," Clint protested. "I mean, with seven of us, I doubt all of us are going to see everyone else romantically at all. What's the big deal being a soulmate you're just really good friends with?"

"And that's why I'm not certain," Natasha expressed pointedly. "It's not like I really know the guy – or can read his facial expressions to figure anything else out. I only have theories, and the little that he tells me."

"He may be afraid that we'll judge the person he is underneath the suit," Bruce murmured. "Perhaps he wants to keep his identity secret because that's the only way to protect himself from being hurt."

"So, you're in on Operation Coconut?" Clint said expectantly, looking at Wanda.

"Coconut?" Pietro repeated.

"We're going to break through his hard outer shell to get to the heart underneath it," Clint explained, looking pleased – Wanda heard in his thoughts that he had been the one to come up with the name.

Wanda nodded decisively, even as her heart fluttered with nervousness. Tony Stark was the cause of her parents' deaths. But she had heard his thoughts and knew it wasn't intentional. Still, over a year's worth of hate was hard to shove aside in moments.

Still, her voice was strong when she said, "Count me in."

* * *

 **So…I'm dirt poor right now. College life, right? Problem is, I can't find a job anywhere, and everywhere I've applied to and continue to apply to is refusing me. Even Walmart, and my local grocery store. I can't even get a job as a janitor, and I'm stressed because I'm charging necessities to my credit card but have no income to back it up. I'm supposed to start school again in September, which should be covered with scholarship, but until then and during school, I'm broke. I'm hunting down my collector's edition Harry Potter books to try and sell those off on eBay for some supplement, and that just breaks my heart but I prefer to have food, ya know?**

 **Anyway, I won't insult you guys just begging for some monetary help, BUT I can make a trade! Anyone willing, I'll gift you a 2,500 word fic for every $5 (or 5,000 words for every $10, etc). I'll write whatever you want within the Avengers or Harry Potter fandom – any pairing, any situation – just no smut. (Or, if you don't have ideas, you can just commission another chapter in one of the fics I have already – I'll work extra hard to think through a block. Or, I'll add a coda to a completed fic. Really, I'm down for whatever you want.) You can send me money in the Cash App (cashtag is "hashtagleh"), and you can send requests to hashtagleh1997 at gmail .**

 **Thank you to anyone who even took the time to read this – and thanks in advance to anyone who can help!**


	11. Lost

**I know, I know, I promised a longer chapter...but splicing it up here fit better so that you can get a little peek into the situation with Pietro. So here we are.**

 **Also, thank you so much to everyone who helped out in sending me money! It truly helped me a bunch with getting some of my necessities. This chapter is in huge part thanks to BubbleFish, who was so kind as to push me along and encourage me to write another chapter. Thank you!**

* * *

There was no one in the world that Pietro loved and trusted more than Wanda. They'd always been thick as thieves, in each other's pockets, and their number one in everything they did, whether it was playing together as children or lying to their teachers in school to get one or both of them out of trouble. Pietro would support Wanda in every endeavor, every whim that struck her. It wasn't blind faith – it was trust built on years of supporting and leaning on each other.

However, this Tony Stark business…it was more difficult than taking the blame for Wanda's misdoing and getting a ruler across his palms in punishment. This wasn't grade school. This was the man who was responsible for their parents' deaths. And it was hard to get over.

Wanda was patient – she knew exactly what he was thinking. And it wasn't as though she didn't have her own misgivings, either. He knew she struggled. But Tony Stark – her soulmate? Or, one of them, at least. The rest of the Avengers being thrown in there was a surprise too, but at least he had nothing to fault them with. It was only Tony Stark who was the problem.

Except that Tony Stark was also Iron Man, and that was a shock. Hard to believe, honestly. Oh, he didn't doubt it – not with Wanda so certain. But it was difficult to equate the hero who had a direct hand in saving New York – and really, the world – with the careless playboy who'd created the bombs that decimated Sokovia.

But, knowing this did make it a bit easier to swallow the idea of living in the same tower as the man. He knew Wanda wanted to get to know the billionaire as well as the hero – doing so while living somewhere else would be nigh impossible.

It was a good thing she had met four of her other soulmates too – he was honestly happy for her. They seemed like good people – good for Wanda. And he hadn't missed the appreciative glances from the Widow toward his sister – or the returned ones when the Widow was distracted with someone else. It was admittedly uncomfortable to think of Wanda like that, but he just accepted it as it was, hoping that she could be happy in her bond.

After getting back to the Tower, everyone separated to their own floors to shower. A voice in the ceiling that was basically a robotic butler named Jarvis directed the two of them to the guest floor, extending his apologies that Mr. Stark was currently preoccupied with a phone call from India and couldn't personally escort them and show them around. Pietro didn't mind – he preferred to just be alone with his sister, and didn't want to see the resident billionaire any time soon. He could tolerate him for Wanda's sake, but he wasn't ready to forgive him quite yet.

* * *

Wanda ended up falling asleep after her shower, and Pietro was bored. After the experiments, he had a lot more wild energy to work off before he could even think of sleeping at night. As a rule, naps were out of the question.

Sighing to himself, he decided to go wandering through the halls – there were 93 floors, surely some of them were open to the public – and slipped out quietly, leaving a note on the counter for Wanda to find when she awoke.

It was still during work hours – just about three o' clock – so Pietro had lots of people to watch as he walked quickly up and down each hallway. Everything was sleek and modern and cold, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

After an hour or so, he finally stopped – he thought he was on the 62nd floor, but he couldn't be sure, as he had been going up and down stairs all throughout the building for an hour now, and he hadn't bothered stopping to check.

On this floor though, he could see lots of workers floors below; the hallway had a glass railing at the edge that allowed him to look out at everyone, and he took this opportunity to lean against it and observe.

It was odd, that everyone here were just normal business men and women. He'd spent so long thinking of Stark as a monster that somehow, without even realizing it, he had begun to associate the rest of Stark Industries and the people in it with that same view. But these people – they were just going about their lives, trying to make an honest wage to support themselves and their families. His enhanced ears caught a man a couple floors below him, assuring his wife that he was going to be able to get off early and they could have family dinner tonight – he just had to wrap up a couple of things in his office. Another woman was telling her coworker something about her family reunion in a couple of weeks and how she had to bring enough cookies to feed two hundred.

Sighing, he tugged slightly at his whitened hair. It had turned this odd color combination after the experiments, and it made him much more eye-catching. Even now, some passing interns and employees gave him side glances. He had to admit, he did look out of place. Wearing just normal street clothes rather than the suits or the skirt-and-blouse combinations, he was sure that everyone who passed wondered what he was doing there – and how he had gotten past security at the entrance, looking as he did.

He wondered to himself what he was doing there, in Stark's tower. Wanda was going to bond with her soulmates – and then what? What would he do? Stay there, a shadow of his sister, waiting for the other two in his soul bond who might not ever come? It didn't sound appealing. But Wanda was his sister, and he would stick by her. But, at what cost? He wondered. How many people could he really meet here? And what were the chances that any of them, let alone two of them, would be the ones meant for him?

Shaking himself of those morose thoughts, he straightened, turning to go jogging up and down the stairs again.

He was so lost in his whirling thoughts, he hadn't noticed the man who had appeared behind him and reached out to touch his shoulder right before he'd turned around. The quick movement startled the man, and Pietro wasn't fast enough to catch himself before practically bowling the man over.

"Shit, shit, sorry!" Pietro panicked a bit when the man gasped and grabbed his chest in pain. He hadn't thought he'd hit the man hard enough to cause this extreme of a reaction, but the way the man was gasping, it was as though he'd stabbed him through the chest.

"Are you alright?" Pietro questioned, hands hovering in front of him, wanting to help and not sure how. "Do you need something? Water? A chair?"

"No, it's alright," the man managed a smile. It was a nice smile on an unassuming face – just a regular business man probably in his late forties with a receding hairline. Someone who was probably forgotten about a lot, overlooked. "It's no big deal – I just had an injury a little while ago and I'm still recovering. Nothing wrong with you."

"Oh," Pietro said dumbly.

"Honestly, I just came to see if you were alright," the man continued, dropping his hand from where he had been rubbing his chest.

Pietro bristled at the assumption that some stranger could see what he was going through – that it was so plain that this stranger felt the need to come and check on him. "Why wouldn't I be?" he said stiffly.

The man gave him a look that might have seemed placid and unassuming, but Pietro could detect the don't-give-me-that-bullshit expression lying just beneath the surface.

"You just looked a bit lost," the man said with a bit of a shrug. "And somehow I don't think you work here."

"I don't," Pietro agreed. "But I'm not lost." The man looked like he was about to say something in response to that, but Pietro cut him off before he could begin. "Thank you – I'll get out of your way. Sorry for running into you."

Without waiting for a response, he turned and went toward the stairs. As he walked down, he happened to glance back, and the man was just turning in his position to leave.

It made him wonder – had that man watched him the entire time he walked away?

* * *

Pepper was relieved to finally be done with her work for the day. It had been a tiring few days – weeks, really, what with the attack on New York and then everything with Phil and his recovery – and she was looking forward to snuggling into the couch with Phil and watching some TV before bed. The best part about this was that she could kick off her stilettos and let her aching feet get some rest. And she knew that Phil would love to give her a foot massage – it was one of the things he had admitted made him feel more useful while he recovered and couldn't do any truly difficult labor. And, he said, he knew it made her calm and relaxed, and that's why he enjoyed doing it so much.

Phil was sitting on the couch when she stepped off the elevator, as though he had known what her thoughts were before she got there. He was wearing his pair of house sweats and a blue tee shirt that matched the color of his eyes, and she smiled at the sight, her heart swelling with love.

"Hello, love," she murmured, kicking off her heels beside the couch and climbing up next to him, pressing a kiss of greeting to his lips. He returned the kiss, but he seemed oddly distracted. Odd, because he always either gave her his undivided attention or let her know that he had to finish up something with work or that he would pay attention in a moment or two. "How did your day go?"

"I met our third today," were the first words out of his mouth. She sat up straight, her eyes wide with shock – why hadn't he called her immediately? Why was she just finding out now? Who was it? Why did he look so troubled? This explained his distraction, but why did she get the feeling this wasn't a good thing?

"What?" was all she was able to manage, but Phil, as ever, caught all of the questions she was thinking and wasn't able to voice yet, caught by surprise as she was.

"I didn't know until about ten minutes ago, when I went to change my clothes and saw the mark," Phil explained first, and she nodded, relieved to know that he hadn't intentionally kept this from her. "But, I don't know who it is. I met several people today – I was walking around the Tower a lot today as part of my PT."

"You don't know…?" Pepper let herself trail off, and shook her head as though to clear it. "Well, can you remember all of the people you met today?"

"I don't know," Phil sighed, looking a bit helpless, but also – determined. "At least twenty. There's a new cashier at Starbucks. There's a couple of interns in R&D. I chatted with someone from HR."

"Well, did you leave the Tower at all today?" Phil shook his head at the question. "That's a relief, at least. So it's got to be someone who works here, right?"

"Or I walked past someone who never made it past the front desk and it counted," Phil supposed dishearteningly.

"We'll check security feeds for when you're on the first floor," Pepper promised. "I know Tony would enthusiastically shove all the information he could at you."

Phil snorted, knowing that to be true, at least. Tony had been trying for years to find Pepper's soulmates. Finding him had been an accident, but still he didn't doubt that Tony could and would do this.

"For now, just make a list of all the people you can remember," Pepper instructed, and grinned happily, excitedly. She grabbed his hand, leaned forward and pressed a hard kiss to Phil's lips. "We're going to find our soulmate, Phil."

* * *

Pietro looked down at his chest, at the blue silhouette of an eagle, surrounded in black. Right next to it was his own silver lightning bolt inside a white Gemini symbol, all surrounded in a pale blue. The other third of his soulmate mark was still dark.

"And you don't know who it might have been?" Wanda repeated again, sounding disbelieving.

"No, Wanda," he said again with a sigh. "I have a couple of ideas, but in case you've forgotten, I've met a lot of people today. We both have."

"And of course you didn't take a shower earlier, so we can't even rule out everything before those robots," Wanda said with a slightly frustrated sigh. "I told you Pietro, that one day your bathing habits – or lack of – would come back to bite you in the ass."

"Unlike some people," Pietro sniffed, "I don't sweat like a fire hydrant. My shower this morning was fine."

Wanda sighed and rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything else on the matter. "Well, you said you had some ideas," she prompted.

"Emphasis on some," Pietro muttered. "I went and sat in the cafeteria at dinner time. It's amazing how many people who work here work so late."

"Well, that means that it's probably someone who works here!" Wanda encouraged.

"Oh, yes, that narrows it down," Pietro said sarcastically. "This is Stark Industries. That's at least 3,000 workers, not to mention those who work separately in the Starbucks downstairs, or the Jamba Juice, or the part-time workers, or the unpaid summer interns…"

"Alright, alright," Wanda interrupted. "You're making it sound a lot harder than it has to be. We know you met this person sometime between three o' clock and seven-thirty."

"Assuming I met them after we got to the Tower," Pietro reminded her.

"Right," Wanda nodded, undeterred. "And every floor has surveillance…"

"Wanda, are you suggesting that I hack the servers to get at the surveillance footage to figure out who my soulmate is?" Pietro said flatly.

"Of course not," Wanda scolded. "That's just asking to be arrested, and especially as we're not American citizens, we can't risk that happening. But we could ask someone if we can see it, and tell them the reason why."

"Oh, and you're counting on this person's kind heart to manage it?" Pietro snorted. "Not likely."

"And why not?" Wanda demanded. "This is your soulmate, Pietro. I'm sure there's some security guard who could help us out. Hell, I think even Stark would be willing to help out with this one."

"I don't need Stark's help," Pietro said coldly. "And soulmate or no, don't you dare try and ask him in my behalf."

Wanda rolled her eyes, unaffected by his anger. "I wasn't planning to," she retorted. "But we need to get the footage soon. Most businesses archive or delete their surveillance after two weeks."

"Don't worry about it, Wanda," Pietro ordered. "I don't need anyone else's help. I'll find my soulmate myself."

Wanda's eyes shadowed with hurt. "I want to help you, brother," she implored. "We've already seen how my soulmates' bond is. I want you to have the best."

"And what if I don't have the best, huh?" Pietro demanded. "What if it's another like Stark I'm bonded to? I don't want to be saddled down like you are."

"Pietro, I know that it's difficult with Stark's situation," Wanda said. "Don't doubt for a second that I'm not having as hard a time as you are reconciling with the fact that he's my soulmate."

"But what?" Pietro demanded harshly.

"But I don't want to see you longing for something that's right there in your grasp!" Wanda cried. "I still have to deal with a whole other pile of garbage with my soulmates, but you may have something already waiting and ready for you!"

"I'll take the chance," Pietro decided. "Just let me deal with it, Wanda. I'll look for them myself."

* * *

 **Lol I know a few of you guessed that pairing...I like it. :)**

 **Also, anyone have any ideas how to bring Sam into the picture? And Rhodey? I mean, I know the basic scene I want to set up, but how to incorporate it and when is the question...**

 **Thanks for reading! I really adore everyone's feedback!**


	12. Something Like Therapy

**I've been working on this for a bit, and I'm honestly pretty pleased with how it turned out. I could make several tweaks and go through it again to make it waaaay better, but if I allowed myself to do that, I would never be satisfied and it would never see the light of day.**

 **This chapter didn't go at all how I expected it to...but...oh, well. Rhodey begged to be heard and he took up half the chapter. But are we really upset? No. Because it's Rhodey. And Rhodey is awesome.**

 **Gosh, I'm tired and I'm rambling. Insomnia is so real, folks.**

 **Anyway. On with the chapter!**

* * *

It was hard to get close to Iron Man. Wanda figured this out during her first week in the Tower. The Avengers were called out to another battle that she and Pietro somehow went along to help out with, and she had hoped that she could stop him a moment – to say _what_ , she wasn't sure – but he had shot off as soon as the battle was over. She was certain that he was headed back to the Tower, though he was going the opposite direction, because Tony Stark would need to be there when they came back, to keep up the ruse of his secret identity.

"It's a habit of his," Clint said when he saw her staring off after him, and she was surprised how he had managed to sneak up on her. She supposed she _had_ been a bit preoccupied, but still it made her a bit uneasy that she hadn't noticed the trail of his thoughts to know that he was close. Last she had seen him, he'd been perched atop one of the buildings, taking out the giant bird/dinosaur things from above. She was surprised at his ability to move quickly and silently, but she supposed it made sense, being a spy and all.

"We've figured out that trying to catch him after a battle is pretty much a dead end," Clint explained further, grabbing one of the arrows still stuck in one of the dead creatures and shoving it into his quiver. (She hoped he was planning to clean those of creature guts later…) "Unless there's a special case that might need him or Stark after the battle is over – like the mini Iron Men – he's gonna bolt, ASAP."

"Any recommendations?" Wanda prodded, actively not looking through his mind to find answers quicker. Eventually they were going to find out he could access their minds, and she didn't want to make it a habit of violating their privacy in such a way. Better to have numbers and past experience to back her up when the time came.

Clint shrugged, staring into the sky in the direction Iron Man had zipped off to.

"I think just coming at it with blunt force," he said. "I've sent a couple of emails and texts inviting him to hang out with the rest of us, but with no response. Not sure if he checks them, ignores them, or if they're the wrong contact information to begin with. Or he's just not interested enough in what we invite him to."

"I'm thinking team movie nights," Natasha said, coming up behind them as she caught the tail end of Clint's comment. Pietro followed behind her, looking energized after the battle wherein he'd been able to actually use his powers for _real_. "Or team meals. Bruce mentioned he makes great Mexican."

"What about JARVIS?" Wanda wondered, finding a hole in their explanations. "Have you asked him to pass things on to Iron Man?"

"That's Stark's AI," Clint said with a raised eyebrow. "You think he'd be fine being used as a messenger for Iron Man?"

"JARVIS is linked through the Iron Man suit," Wanda said, confused that they really hadn't thought of this. "And Iron Man has been active for more than a year. I'm sure they've at least become more than passing acquaintances by now, with him in Iron Man's ear all the time."

"You think a hyped-up computer can make _friends_ with people?" Pietro questioned incredulously. "It's a _machine_!"

"Regardless of the definitions of 'friend' and 'AI', your idea may have some merit," Natasha cut in thoughtfully. "Can't hurt to try, at least."

And so they did. They planned for team dinner that Friday, with movie watching on the agenda right afterwards. Bruce was the one to pass on the message to JARVIS to request Iron Man's presence for Mexican he'd made on his own, and they all waited in anticipation for his response.

It was disheartening, to say the least. Iron Man pointed out that he had a _face mask_ , or did they forget, and he wouldn't be able to eat any of it without their knowing about him, and he wasn't doing that just for the admittedly tempting offer of Bruce's cooking. So he would be doing nothing the whole time.

"Oh, tell him to suck it up and wear a fucking ski mask, or something," Clint said irritably. After all the effort they'd put in, and the man was saying _no_.

And that's just what he responded with to Clint's comment – a simple, blunt, _no_.

They did enjoy Bruce's cooking, but the meal was somewhat clouded by their disappointment in their efforts to get close to Iron Man failing again. Pietro was clearly struggling not to keep his eyes continuously rolling at the entire situation. Wanda reflected that he probably would have been a lot more sympathetic had their soulmate been anyone except Tony Stark, but she didn't give him grief for it. She knew how hard he was struggling with all of this, and living in Stark Tower certainly didn't help any.

She noted as Rogers was the first to leave, not staying for the movie but heading for the elevator. She helped Natasha with the dishes in comfortable quiet, hearing Clint make loud declarations to Pietro and Bruce about why Brave was the best Disney movie and he was not biased at all because the main character's weapon of choice was the bow and arrow. Pietro was doing nothing but egging him on, being intentionally antagonistic to rile Clint up further, for his own amusement.

"Any more ideas for Iron Man?" Natasha asked her casually as she passed a soapy frying pan over to be rinsed and dried. Without even needing to read the other woman's thoughts, Wanda knew that the intent behind the question was anything but casual. She could sense the probing behind it, and valiantly stayed out of Natasha's thoughts, trying to give her her privacy as much as she could.

"Still pondering that one," Wanda said neutrally. "It would be easier if we knew _why_ he was so against this whole soul bond."

Natasha hummed in agreement, but kept her silence for several minutes as they continued to wash.

"I met Clint several years ago," Natasha said suddenly, breaking the silence. "Typical boy-meets-girl story, I suppose; we were on opposing sides of the law, he was sent to kill me, we fought to kill each _other_ , and we found out we were soulmates and he recruited me to SHIELD."

"How typical," Wanda said dryly, running a plate under the faucet and setting it on the drying rack on the counter.

Natasha's lip quirked to the side a bit – a sign of her sardonic amusement. She continued, "It was years before I met anyone else. Now, being with everyone else – the only person I'm really sure of here is Clint. I had time to get to know him. He's an idiot, but he's also incredibly loyal and has always sought after a closeness between us I've never managed with anyone else. I trust him more than anyone else in the world." She passed Wanda a handful of soapy silverware. "I want that with everyone else, too."

"It sounds nice," Wanda admitted.

"It does," Natasha smiled a bit, and Wanda dared to call it _wistful_. She was also certain that the only reason she was seeing these emotions so openly on the Widow's face was because she was allowing her to.

A moment later, the smile faded into seriousness. "That's going to take a lot of time, though," she said. "I think about our end goal with this, sometimes. We're all trying to get close to Iron Man, to get him to feel welcome in this soul bond with all of us. But when he does take a chance – and he _will_ , eventually – what then? We hardly know each other. What would he see when he looks at the rest of us, and our interactions with each other?"

"Not much," Wanda said, realizing the truth of her words and thinking on the interactions everyone had with everyone else. Even looking at tonight – the Captain had left pretty much as soon as it was socially acceptable and not quite rude. Bruce had been charged with making dinner, and to her knowledge, no one had even kept him company as he did so. And making dinner for all of them – especially with two people with heightened metabolisms on the team – was not a small or easy feat. Even now, they were all separated, doing their own things rather than attempting to get them all _together_.

"I think we're all pretty emotionally constipated," Wanda remarked, absently drying the saucepan that had been used to make rice.

A ghost of a smile traced Natasha's lips at Wanda's blunt observation. "I think we should rein it back with Iron Man," she said. "All of our focus has been on him, and it hasn't left time for anyone else."

"You think we should stop trying to sway him?" Wanda asked in surprise. "Won't that do more harm than good, for him to think we've given up, even temporarily?"

"I don't think we should stop," Natasha corrected with a shake of her head, shutting the water off and grabbing another towel to help finish drying and putting away the dishes. "Just not focus on him so much. Bruce needs help, too. He's very shy and has extreme anxiety. Steve is…lost. PTSD from the war, no doubt. Waking up with everyone he knew dead or close to it certainly doesn't help. They need help and love as much as Iron Man does. I don't even know about you – we haven't even had the chance to talk a lot. I would like to get to know you, and Bruce, and Steve, without having every conversation revolve around trying to convince Iron Man that we're worth his time."

Wanda smiled a bit at this speech, sensing the passion behind it even though the words were said mostly flatly, in the way the Black Widow said everything with an air of neutrality and disinterest. "I would like to get to know you, too," she admitted. "Something _more_ than the fact that you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

Natasha smiled at the flirting, looking pleased not necessarily with the compliment but with the intent behind it. Wanda smiled, happy that she could forge a relationship with one of her other soulmates. This was much easier than trying to get over Tony Stark being her soulmate, let alone convince him to give it a shot with all of them.

"Let's go on a date," Natasha decided. "Lunch tomorrow?"

Wanda's smile grew, her heart soft. "Sounds perfect."

* * *

"Sir, Colonel Rhodes is on the line for you."

JARVIS' voice broke through Tony's thoughts like a baseball through a glass window, and he blinked, trying to gather the remnants of…whatever he had been thinking about. He looked down at the device in his hands, and wondered what it was. He couldn't remember much – just his mind spinning furiously while his hands worked to invent…whatever this was.

Oh, well. He shrugged. He would just have to reverse engineer it later. Probably listen to the recording from JARVIS to hear his muttering while he'd worked. He'd figure out what this thing was soon enough.

He smacked his lips, reaching for the mug of coffee sitting beside him on the table. Just before it reached his lips however, he caught a whiff of engine oil and immediately put it back down.

"Dummy, what did I say about feeding Daddy engine oil?" he berated the robot, who gave a sad beep at the chastisement. "Don't give me that look – you know better by now. Go to the corner, you useless sack of bolts. No, don't try and get out of this. Go!" Theatrically (the drama queen), Dummy hung his arm which was sometimes his head as he wheeled slowly over to the corner. Tony shook his head in despair at his drunken creation and went to the coffee machine to get another pot brewing.

"Sir," JARVIS interrupted again. "Colonel Rhodes is still waiting."

Tony frowned. "'Still'? How long has he been waiting? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Approximately three and a half minutes," JARVIS replied promptly. "And I did tell you, Sir, before you discovered Dummy's attempts at coffee."

"Hm," Tony hummed, staring as the coffee began to drip into the pot. "Put him on, J."

 _"Tony,"_ Rhodey's voice filled the workshop, a hint of worry as well as disapproval in the tones.

"Rhodey bear!" Tony greeted cheerfully, not taking his eyes from the pot in front of him as it filled with the nectar of the gods. "It's been much too long since I've heard your honey sweet tones. You never talk, you never call – are you breaking up with me?!"

 _"I've broken up with you several times in the past twenty-one years, and it never seems to stick,"_ Rhodey said dryly, and Tony gasped.

"Does that mean we're married now?" he said delightfully. "We should go on a honeymoon. How do you like Rome?"

 _"Firstly, you know perfectly well that Athens is far superior to Rome,"_ Rhodey expressed resolutely. _"Secondly, no, we're not married. I can't deal with your sorry ass. Let someone else handle the crazy. It's why you need **six** soulmates, right?" _

He laughed, but Tony didn't, instead saying, "Rome is from my mother land. Ha, and that's funny, because it's on my mother's side. So we would obviously go to Rome on our honeymoon."

 _"Yeah, because your partner wants to be thinking about **your** **mother** during your honeymoon. And I'm going to stop encouraging this conversation right now. You have any idea why I called?"_

Tony pouted. "And here I thought this was a social call. Why don't you ever talk to me until something's _wrong_?"

 _"You know perfectly well that I don't have time off and this is therefore not a social call – don't pretend otherwise."_

Tony gasped theatrically and pulled the finally finished pot off the coffee maker to pour himself a cup of the deliciousness.

"Why, that would imply that I had hacked into top-secret military databases, and that's just _illegal_ Rhodey and I would never do such a thing!" He paused a moment to take a sip of his coffee before he spoke again. "Just out of curiosity, how _is_ D.C. this time of year?"

He heard Rhodey sigh longsufferingly from the other end, and grinned to himself as Rhodey didn't respond directly to the question.

 _"My phone cut out for a minute there and I didn't hear what you said,"_ Rhodey said dryly. _"But anyway, theoretical law-breaking aside, I heard from Pepper that you've disappeared. Not just you, but also Iron Man. She's concerned. **I'm** concerned. What the hell is going on over there?"_

Tony blinked. "I haven't even been down in the workshop for a week!" After saying this, he realized he had no idea what day it was, and tilted his head up in a wordless question to JARVIS.

"It is now Wednesday, Sir," JARVIS said helpfully. "You have not left your workshop since last Thursday morning, wherein you went to the communal floor for more coffee beans."

 _"As I said, we're concerned,"_ Rhodey put in, hearing JARVIS' comments from his own end. _"What's **really** going on? You don't lock yourself in like this just to invent."_

"Honestly, Rhodey, I don't even know," Tony sighed, walking back over to the table he'd been working at, mug in one hand and coffee pot in the other. "I've told you about the superheroes I'm housing, yes?"

 _"Briefly. Mostly that you're scared they're too close and they'll find out your secret metal kink. But I know that's not it. What gives, Tones?"_

"I'm going to – regretfully – let your kink comment slide," Tony said primly, picking up the device he'd left on his table and beginning to inspect it. "And that really _is_ it. I mean, besides the fact that all of them are my soulmates, but the root of it is them finding out about Iron Man."

He heard choking on the other end of the line – Rhodey was clearly surprised by the sudden statement, and the content of it. It was like at MIT, when he told Rhodey about the fantastic sex he'd had with another senior over at Harvard, and after giving his best friend several details about said sex, he'd later found out the girl was Rhodey's cousin. Not a cousin he talked to a lot, but still. Someone he'd bickered with at family reunions as kids.

 _"Tone – Tony,"_ Rhodey wheezed, _"What the **fuck** , man? You met your soulmates and you didn't even think to tell me?! I wouldn't have even been mad about you hypothetically hacking secure government channels to get me on the phone to tell me shit like that! How's the sex? No, shut up, I don't want to know that. But it's good, right? I remember your bed – it can definitely fit seven people quite comfortably. I know **that** was planned, don't try and deny it. Shit, man – this is great. Wait, why didn't **Pepper** tell me, either? How long have you known? Pepper **does** know, right?"_

"Pepper knows everything," Tony agreed. "It's been about six weeks – I found out right after New York."

 _"What the actual **fuck** ," _Rhodey expressed, somehow sounding both offended and delighted at the same time. _"And yet somehow you don't sound overjoyed, and you're locking yourself in your lab for days on end."_ Here Rhodey paused, before his voice was dangerous and lacking in any form of joviality. _"What did they do?"_

"Nothing!" Tony protested. "Really, Rhodey – nothing at all. Stop your fussing and worrying. They're all perfectly fine, getting to know each other – you know, normal things after finding out you're soulmates with someone."

 _"And why aren't you included in this?"_ Rhodey demanded, before he realized, _"Shit. It's because they think their soulmate is Iron Man, isn't it? Not Tony Stark."_

"Got it in one," Tony snarked, grabbing a small screwdriver to fiddle with the device in his hand. He really did need to figure out what it was and what it did, because obviously he'd had a reason for creating it that was probably important. Nevermind that he had been known to have made a perpetual motion machine just to keep a slinky going when he was sixteen, and Rhodey had found him laughing hysterically with tears in his eyes as he had been so unbelievably tired he wasn't fully coherent anymore.

"And you know, they already have six of them. Or five, because they haven't found the last one. So, it's not like I'm really _necessary_ in this group anyway…"

 _"Tony, don't you dare,"_ Rhodey warned. _"No one is 'necessary' for anything, but that doesn't mean that you don't deserve it. And you damn well deserve your own happiness, so stop shooting yourself in the foot here."_

"Rhodey, I can't be with them," Tony sighed, suddenly so bone-deep exhausted he wasn't sure what to do with himself. "I've accepted it, I'm over it, moving past it, whatever – and I'm staying out of the way because they keep trying to get Iron Man to join them and they don't need that. They don't need _me_."

 _"Like **hell** ," _Rhodey said vehemently. _"You know, for a genius, you really are stupid sometimes. Get it through that thick head of yours that you are **not a burden**. If your soulmates want nothing to do with you, then fine. That's on them, and they're the stupidest people I've ever met. And I've met the people in your Board meetings. But let **them** make that choice."_

"Rhodey, there's no choice to be made…" Tony started, but Rhodey cut him off.

 _"Oh, bullshit – if they're so blind they can't see…"_

"I don't _have_ a soul James, remember?!" Tony cried, interrupting the other man. He dropped the device to the table in favor of rubbing one hand over his face and the other clutching at the edges of the arc reactor casing in his chest, to remind himself of what was there. "The Ten Rings took it away. Or, more accurately, they provided the means for it to be obvious to the _world_ what I'm missing. Merchant of Death, remember? Can't have a soul after all that. And now there's no evidence of having one _anywhere_ on my body. It's gotta mean something, hasn't it? I'm not _meant_ to have soulmates. I wouldn't have ever even known who they _were_ if it hadn't been for all of them attributing it to Iron Man. They're not _mine_. _No one_ is mine."

 _"Tony, that's absolute **bullshit** ,"_ Rhodes said bluntly, though still with the same affection he always showed the billionaire. _"The only thing the Ten Rings took from you was part of your chest cavity. Your soul isn't something anyone can steal – not like that."_

"Look, Iron Man is _good_ ," Tony said tiredly, ignoring the nonsense his best friend was spouting. "He's a _hero_. And because he doesn't have a face for under the mask, he's safe. He doesn't have to worry about interpersonal relationships. Tony Stark is none of that. I'm the Merchant of Death, I built my empire on others' pain and suffering…"

 _"Tony…"_

"And I am quite well aware of my inability to form close relationships with anyone," Tony spoke louder to be heard over Rhodey's protests. "Iron Man doesn't need to be saddled with my legacy. Therefore, Iron Man is no one."

 _"Tony, you **are** Iron Man," _Rhodey insisted. _"You think anyone else could do **half** as good of a job in that suit as you do? Absolutely not. When Iron Man goes out with the rest of the Avengers, it's not just some shell. It's **you** , with this – this **shield** around you, and you can read into that literally **and** metaphorically, because it works. But **you're** the one who's putting yourself in danger, making those sacrifices, and raising my blood pressure. Not some…insubstantial piece of metal with really cool weapons attached."_

"Very impassioned, Rhodey – it warms my heart," Tony said sarcastically, ready to be done with this conversation. "Any other pearls of wisdom, or can I get to figuring out what the hell I made in my fugue this time?"

 _"Yes, actually,"_ Rhodey responded. _"Give your soulmates a chance, Tones. I can **guarantee** you that no one of them has some perfectly ordinary story that will make them appalled to hear yours."_

"And that concludes this week's episode of Dr. Phil," Tony snarked. "Bye, Rhodey. I'll hack into the government lines later when I want to talk again." Rhodes sighed, but bid him farewell, and Tony called to JARVIS to end the connection.

Forcefully pushing all thoughts of soulmates and Rhodey's words out of his mind – at least for now, because he knew when he tried to sleep those thoughts would creep up on him and beg to be considered – he focused entirely on the device in his hands.

"Bring up any records of while I was making this, J," he called out. "See if I can figure out what this is supposed to do."

This, he could do. Engineering was his forte, and it could be fun sometimes doing things like this, figuring out where his brain had been operating at a certain time and how he could do it again. And he knew he would eventually figure out what his tired brain had come up with this time. And when he did figure it out, he would be either incredulous that some part of his subconscious thought he needed this, or very grateful that he had managed to invent or improve whatever it was. He could then spend the next long while finding improvements and fixing bugs on his new little toy. Or, he'd get bored and discard it, and no one would ever know what had happened.

Now, he sighed, if only the entire situation with the residents in his Tower were as easy as all the equations he had to go through to create some of these things.

* * *

 **So...thoughts? Ideas? Criticism?**

 **Comments are like food - they fuel me through the next chapter.**

 **Thank you all for your continued support!**


	13. Just Friends

***gasp* I've updated in less than a week! I'm so proud of myself. I have the next few chapters skeleton-ed out, so updates SHOULD come quicker, at least for the next little bit. But I'm starting school again in a little more than a week, so we'll see how long that lasts. ;)**

 **I recognize I've been neglecting Steve a little bit. Here's this chapter in payment. Or apology. However you want to see it.**

* * *

Steve had just broken the third punching bag of the night when the door opened behind him. He didn't turn to address the entrant, only moving on to begin punching the fourth bag. The footsteps he heard behind him were loud, confident – a stride he recognized from Tony – Stark. To his knowledge though, the man had never come into the gym before; he'd simply provided the funding and the means to create it and the modifications for each member of the team and then stayed out of the way.

Stark's tread stopped after a moment, and Steve knew the man was several feet behind him, but he didn't say anything. He didn't know what _to_ say, and besides, Stark had been the one to approach _him_. He could be the first one to speak.

"I see you're taking my instructions to heart," Stark said behind him after a brief pause when it became clear Steve wasn't going to say anything.

But, once the billionaire _did_ speak, Steve stopped punching. His ma had raised him better than someone who would be rude just because he wasn't feeling too happy. His excuses ran out when the other man began to speak, so he resigned himself to his fate of having to have a conversation with the brunette. So, he turned and gave the man his full attention.

"Instructions?" Steve repeated, not sure what the other man was talking about.

Stark nodded toward the bags that had ripped open and strewn sand across the floor. "I'll find a material that works for you, you know," he told him. "These are just prototypes, so you're doing me a favor, seeing what works and what doesn't."

"I see," Steve said, even though he didn't really understand why it was important to the man.

"I think I might try a polyester weave similar to seatbelts," Tony said thoughtfully, frowning as he considered this in his head.

"Was there something you needed me for, Mr. Stark?" Steve said with as much politeness he could manage, though an undercurrent of annoyance ran through his words that he wasn't quite able to hide. The man didn't look perturbed by it, though.

"Ew, firstly, just call me Tony," he instructed with a grimace. Steve tilted his head, impatiently waiting for Tony – Stark – to get on with it.

"See, the thing is, I fully support you beating the shit out of some punching bags," Stark explained, raising his hands in a sort of gesture that said "don't blame me". "Trust me, I've been through my own coping mechanisms for the shit I've been through, and yours is far healthier than some of the ones I have partaken in, trust me."

"So what's the problem?" Steve prodded with irritation.

Stark grimaced. "It's not that you're doing anything _wrong_ ," he said, "It's just that I _do_ know exactly how much force it takes to break these things, and I've heard enough of Howard's bragging to know how much you're exerting yourself." Steve raised an eyebrow, waiting for the other man to get to the point.

"So, that being said, I don't know what else you like to do, but do you want to get out of the Tower for a bit?" Stark questioned, seemingly apropos of nothing, leaving Steve feeling caught off guard.

"What?" he said confusedly.

"Yeah, we can do whatever you want," the man said easily, though Steve detected a hint of strain in his shoulders, like he wanted to duck his head and bring his shoulders up around his ears. "I know there's an art exhibit at the Met, and you like art. Or there's a really good pizza place on Fifth…or even if you just want to grab a hot dog in Central Park. I just figure getting out of the Tower would be fun."

"Why?" Steve asked suspiciously, searching for and trying to figure out whether or not the billionaire had an ulterior motive. He _had_ to – he just didn't know what it _was_. And that made him nervous, not knowing.

Stark shrugged, seemingly without a care but still looking nervous. "Even I get tired of being in the Tower for days on end," he admitted.

"But why – _you_?" Steve questioned, still watching the man carefully. "I would've thought you'd send…someone else."

 _Anyone_ else, really. Stark didn't give the impression that he would care about anyone who didn't directly influence his paycheck or all of the benefits that came with it. Besides which, Stark wasn't his soulmate. He saw no reason why the man would be reaching out to _him_ – not unless he wanted him for something. He didn't know what. But he knew that everyone else on the team was trying to get to know everyone else more, including him, and if Stark was trying to get him to accept them, he would have told one of _them_ to come talk to him today. But he could think of no _good_ reason the man himself would invite him out of the Tower.

"I don't have people for _everything_ ," the billionaire snarked. "You can't _buy_ friends – I tried that in college. Funny enough, the only friend I got was one who _refused_ to take my money."

Steve was taken aback by his comment. "You want to be friends – with me?" he turned the idea over in his mind, but it just didn't compute. He'd done _nothing_ to extend any kind of sign that he would be interested in becoming friends with _anyone_ , but especially with the man he had snapped and snarled at on the helicarrier so many weeks ago. How could the man think he was someone to approach like this?

Stark looked even more uncomfortable than before, faced with Steve's blunt statement. "Sure," he said, too casually. "Why not?"

"Tony, I don't know how most of your friendships work, but we haven't exactly been _nice_ to each other," Steve said, hardly noticing that he'd called the man by his first name.

Stark simply waved a hand at this comment. "Really, it would follow my track record," he said. "My best friend, Rhodey? The very first thing he said to me was calling me a 'stupid fucker who wouldn't know logic if it bit me in the dick'." He grinned at whatever expression must have been on Steve's face at that. "Direct quote, that. To be fair, I had just berated him – a stranger – for the way he was carrying his books. I still hold that I was entirely fair in my judgement…I mean, he had his smallest book at the _bottom_ of the stack. Basic physics says no to shit like that.

"And then my other friend Pepper? Well, I mentioned that one already. Took several days for my eyes to go back to normal after the pepper spray." He grinned at the memory, this smile seeming more real than any Steve had seen thus far. Then his smile dimmed a bit as he looked back at Steve.

"Look, what we said to each other in the first twenty-four hours or so is water under the bridge, as far as I'm concerned," Tony said. "It was a stressful situation for everyone."

"But – why _me_?" Steve pressed, searching for signs of artifice. This honesty truthfully just made him uncomfortable, sure that there was a hidden agenda in the brunette.

"Look, I've seen how you react when the rest of them try and include you," Tony said. "You don't want to be a part of their soulmate bond, but you don't want to tell them – I get it. I don't know _why_ , but I'm sure you have your reasons. And considering that I don't care about the whole soulmate thing, and _we're_ certainly not soulmates…" he shrugged at Steve's surprised look. "You can have someone to talk to whom you know doesn't have some sort of hidden agenda to get you to accept everyone and whatever other hippie peace-love-everyone bullshit everyone else seems intent on trying."

"And you're the perfect candidate for the job," Steve said dryly, and he didn't mean for it to come out like a statement, but there it was.

"Oh, _hell_ , no," Tony said emphatically with a quick shake of his head. "Definitely not the best. But – the only one, at the moment."

Steve looked at Tony, not denying this, but neither confirming it, even though he knew it was true. He _was_ very lonely. But, his best friend and lover was gone. He had a right to be.

But, with Tony being the one to offer the hand of friendship…it was, admittedly, a relief that it was him, someone he knew didn't care about the soul bond and he could just be – _friends_ with. No other expectations than that. It felt like a load he hadn't realized he'd been carrying was lifted off his back. He hated expectations – that he could or couldn't do something, or he had to act a certain way because of who he was.

But Stark – Tony – was a billionaire, and he had grown up in the limelight. And he still remembered that realization he'd had on the helicarrier – that Tony's arrogance was a mask for all of the pain and trauma he'd been through. Steve wasn't rich – or at least not as rich as Tony, but no one was – but he realized then how similar he and Tony really were.

That realization at the forefront of his mind, he managed to give Tony a smile. Tight, and small, but still real. Still – trying.

"I've heard a lot about deep dish pizzas," he offered. "Haven't tried one of those yet."

Tony fairly beamed at him. "Well, Steve, you're in for a treat."

* * *

Tony wasn't sure, exactly, what had possessed him to go downstairs to offer the hand of friendship to Steve Rogers, of all people.

Well, that wasn't quite true. Jarvis had kept him informed every time a punching bag broke, and Tony had come to that realization about Rogers using his full strength, which – well, like he'd told the blond, it wasn't _bad_. It was just indicative of the storm going on inside him that he unleashed every time he raised his fists.

Finally, his sympathy and even _empathy_ had gotten the better of him, and he could resist no longer that pull that dragged him to Steve. He wanted to help the man. No, he wasn't changing his mind on the whole soulmate situation – he had no intention of ever revealing the dual identity of Tony Stark and Iron Man. It's just – he knew that Rogers was intentionally keeping his distance from everyone else, showing no interest in joining their bond, for reasons as yet unknown. And he had no intention of trying to push him toward them, either – that was Rogers' choice, not his. But he couldn't just leave him alone and clearly suffering.

He hadn't honestly thought that Rogers would accept his invitation – not _that_ day, anyway. He'd thought it would take more persuasion and more time to convince him that his offer was genuine.

But Rogers surprised him yet again – even _smiling_ at him, and dear Lord that was attractive and he should definitely do it more – with his acceptance and immediate action in getting cleaned up and dressed. He wore what Tony called in his head "incognito Cap", which really didn't work because baseball hat and nerd glasses did not a disguise make. Not when you had the shoulder-to-waist ratio of a Dorito, anyway – people tended to stare at that amount of attractiveness in a single body.

But he went with it anyway, and surprisingly people actually _did_ stay away from them, like they were just a couple of normal guys in New York. Tony supposed it was the attitude of it that really made the difference.

And now, they sat in a tiny little pizzeria with all five types of deep dish the place offered as well as some classic New York style. Rogers could certainly pack away a lot of food, and Tony would be unsurprised if there were no leftovers by the end.

Rogers had relaxed as they ate, simply picking up one piece of pizza after another and quirking a smile at all of them once he got a taste. They were little, reserved smiles, but it was something and Tony accepted it gladly.

The conversation stayed completely away from tense topics – the soulmate issue with the rest of the team, World War II, and anything to do with Avenging at the top of the list (and yes, Avenging with a capital 'A', because it was different) – and Tony was honestly sure that that's what helped.

"Dammit," Tony finally sighed after he'd lost count of how many slices of pizza he'd consumed. He slouched back in his chair, exhausted and feeling the sleepiness that rose with a food coma. "I can't take another bite. The rest is on you, Blondie."

Steve raised an eyebrow at the nickname, and then kept it raised as he stared around at the rest of the pizza around them – the equivalent of three entire large pizzas, which had to be placed on the tables around them to accommodate them – and gave Tony a dry look.

Tony flapped his hand at the man. "Oh, don't give me that look – you know you can."

"I really don't," Steve said mildly, taking another bite. "I've already eaten two pizzas."

"Oh, stop fucking bragging," Tony begged, tipping his head back like it would help him get more air. "I only ate one and I'm pretty sure you're going to have to roll me out of here. Pepper would be so proud – I _never_ eat this much. She's always trying to fatten me up."

"She, ah – thinks you don't eat enough?" Steve questioned with polite curiosity, taking a gulp of his Coke.

Tony groaned and lifted his head to look back at Steve. "Oh, she'll never be happy," he complained, but there was an undercurrent of fondness there that showed how close they really were. "Apparently twelve cups of coffee and half a bagel is not a day's worth of food. But, I haven't died yet, so I hold out that she's wrong."

Steve frowned at this information, but didn't say anything about it, instead choosing to take another large bite of his pizza.

At the silence, Tony tilted his head and gave the blond a dazed little glare. "Oh, spit it out, Steven. I know you've got something to say. You forget that I'm a genius, and I notice everything, remember?"

"It's not my business," Steve started, and Tony cut him off with a snort.

"Past experience shows that friends are supposed to get on my ass about everything, so you're really going to have to stop with the politesse to be able to keep up with them."

Steve laughed softly, more an exhalation of air than a real laugh, but it was something, and Tony cheered inwardly, looking at the blond expectantly as he waited to hear what the man had to say.

"It's just that _I_ had to eat more than that when I was smaller," Steve explained quickly. He took another sip from his drink. "So you really _do_ need to eat more. And it needs to be more balanced. Just because you're not sick _now_ doesn't mean you won't _get_ sick."

Tony gave a huge sigh, and then regretted it when he almost threw up at the movement to his stomach.

"But _Steeeve_ , I have so many other things to do with my time," he whined.

"Oh, like what?" Steve said skeptically with a raised eyebrow. "You really think your inventions take precedent over basic body necessities?"

"You've clearly never seen me spend an entire _week_ in the lab, with nothing but protein bars and coffee," Tony dismissed. "Showering and shaving doesn't even happen – Pepper gets angry."

"I'm sure," Steve said dryly, and took another bite of pizza.

And after that, it became something of a tradition with them. Just about every other day, they went out to investigate more of the foods that New York City had to offer. It not only helped Steve feel more comfortable in the city that had once been his home, but it also helped soothe any worry that Steve may or may not have about Tony giving his body enough to eat.

Oh, it was by no means perfect. The two of them still argued – not with as much cutting vitriol as that first time on the helicarrier, but still enough that they sometimes had to take a break and stay away from each other for a few hours. Steve would go punch some bags, and Tony would get lost in the haze of the workshop for a bit. Later, they would pretend it had never happened and all would be right again.

Sometimes though, it wasn't the arguments that separated them. Sometimes, Steve would get this look in his eyes, like he was lost, and he would pull away. If someone tried talking to him, he would get surly and dismissive, and it was better to leave him alone then.

So it made it all the better when Steve would approach Tony, wanting to go out somewhere. Tony would always accept, because he cared about the guy, okay? He could admit that. Steve was his friend. And he didn't like seeing his friends upset. So what if he had to push some of his SI projects to the backburner for a few hours, if it would get that awful distraught look out of Steve's eyes? He was doing a service to the country, really.

And it really did help, he could tell. With each outing – he very carefully did _not_ call them "dates", even in his mind – Steve opened up a bit more. Sadness still outlined his eyes, of course, but that was to be expected.

And he came to a realization one day, three weeks after that first pizza date outing, that he was Steve's only friend now. Steve didn't really know _anyone_ else. And wasn't that a depressing thought?

He didn't know what to do with that realization, though. He'd basically promised not to push the guy towards his soulmates – he couldn't go back on that now, nevermind that the most likely and suitable friends were the others on the team. _He_ had a sum total of four real friends: Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, and Steve. He might have counted Agent, but he was never really sure where he stood with that guy. Mostly, he was just Pepper's soulmate and so he accepted him. And Bruce…well, Bruce was sometimes his Science Bro, but Tony was pretty sure he was only doing that to get close to Iron Man. He wasn't sure he could really be considered a "friend".

And the thing with all of Tony's friends – he'd basically made them his friends by attaching to them like a particularly stubborn octopus and refusing to let go until they accepted it and attached themselves to _him_ , too. Thus, he didn't know _how_ to make friends. Not really. So he wouldn't have the first _clue_ how to help Steve out with it.

Still, he determined to try. And he would start with Pepper, because she was the best and she was closest and most available.

Plus, who _didn't_ love Pepper?

* * *

It didn't work out how Tony had hoped.

Oh, it wasn't that they disliked each other immediately – or even at all, as far as Tony could tell. It's just that Pepper became very…distracted.

Everyone had gathered for dinner again. Tony had invited himself along, mostly so that Steve would have someone there he was comfortable with. And because Tony was going, and he knew Steve was going, he made a faux-casual invitation for Pepper and Agent to join as well. It would get Pepper getting to know the team, too, which was perfect because she was in charge of their PR and would know how each of them worked.

Agent had begged off, needing more sleep as he'd been so busy the past couple of days and his still-healing body couldn't take it. Tony didn't know what Agent would be doing that would be so strenuous, but he didn't ask, too glad that Pepper had agreed to come anyway as long as she was able to finish her work in time.

When she appeared on the common floor, Tony greeted her at the elevator with a quick kiss to the cheek.

"Looking ravishing as always, Miss Potts," he remarked, taking in the usual pencil skirt and the button-up that was low enough to reveal her almost-complete soul mark.

"Just doing the usual rounds on the Board members," Pepper smirked.

"Ah, that explains the shirt, then," Tony laughed, walking with her toward the dining room. Pepper tended to wear shirts that revealed her mark when she was meeting with particularly frustrating individuals – many of them were old fuddy-duddies who were uncomfortable with the apparent reminder that she was part of a triad bond, and typically forgot exactly what they were arguing about when met with the plain evidence. It was one way that Pepper was not ashamed at all of using her body to her benefit – it wasn't a sexual usage, but just a very strong and clear reminder that she wasn't to be messed with.

"I'll hold off on talking shop till after dinner, though," Pepper decided. "But we need to talk about the updates on the new Starkphone."

"Ugh," Tony complained as they stepped into the dining room, where everyone, barring Bruce, was already gathered, though only Clint was sitting down yet. "Yeah, don't spoil my appetite. Eat now. Talk later."

Pepper laughed as Steve turned to them with a small smile of greeting on his lips. She was about to say something – to Tony or to Steve, he wasn't sure – but then she froze, eyes catching on something past Steve's form.

"Oh," she breathed.

Tony turned to see what had caused such a reaction that _Pepper_ of all people would be diverted from what she was doing or saying, and saw Pietro staring at her with much the same reaction as her. His eyes were darting from her chest to her face, eyes wide, and for once his form was completely still.

Tony understood when he looked back at Pepper, and saw the filled-in mark on her chest that they'd just been discussing moments before. There was a silver lightning bolt encased in a white Gemini symbol, set against a pale blue background. He looked back at Pietro, and now that he was looking for it, he saw Pepper's mark peeking out of the half-unzipped jacket the younger man was wearing.

"I'm Pepper," Pepper blurted, walking closer to close the distance between her and the white-haired boy. Her steps were uncharacteristically hesitant.

"Pietro," he said, Sokovian accent thick as he blinked, clearly trying to wrap his mind around what was happening. Wanda, standing just behind him, was grinning happily, gaze darting between the two of them. Tony was sure that his expression wasn't much better.

"Pietro," Pepper repeated, smile breaking out on her features. "You met Phil a couple of weeks ago. We've been looking for you."

"I've been looking for who I met, too," Pietro admitted, smile spreading as her happiness seemed to infuse him with confidence.

"Come downstairs!" Pepper half ordered, half invited. "He'll be so happy!"

"Okay," Pietro agreed without a second thought.

"Here," Bruce said from the counter next to the entryway into the dining room. "I already packed some up for Agent Coulson – I'll grab some for you two as well."

"Thank you," Pepper said to the other man, taking Pietro's hand in her own. "Come on. We have a lot of catching up to do."

Tony couldn't even be upset at this turn of events.

* * *

Tony was very happy for Pepper, Steve could see. And he couldn't even blame the guy – he was happy for her, too. And Pietro. And Coulson. He certainly hadn't expected to see soulmates meeting each other tonight.

"I take full credit for what just happened," Tony announced, though Steve was the only one who was paying attention to him, the others turning back into their own conversations after Pepper and Pietro had left.

Steve raised an eyebrow, more amused than put off by the billionaire's smug comment. "Oh? Why's that?"

"Because I invited her to dinner!" Tony said insistently, like he didn't understand why Steve hadn't picked that up already. "They wouldn't have met tonight if I had left her in the clutches of SI paperwork!"

"Hm," Steve hummed in understanding. "But, they live in the same tower. It would've happened eventually."

"Yes, and I have been trying to find Pep and Agent's third for _years_ , Steven; do _not_ take this from me!" Tony warned, pointing his finger at him to emphasize his point.

Steve raised his hands in surrender, quitting teasing the other man for the moment. He sat down beside him as everyone else began to sit down, Bruce sitting on the other side of Tony. Clint was sitting across from him, with Wanda beside him and Natasha on the other side. He saw out the corner of his eye as he reached for the bread basket, how Wanda pressed a quick, chaste kiss to Natasha's cheek. For what reason, he didn't know, but it caused a sudden well of sadness to sit heavily in his stomach. It was such a simple gesture – not necessarily romantic, but not really platonic. He missed having that kind of relationship with someone – with _Bucky_.

"Hey, Cappuccino," Tony nudged him gently with his elbow. "Stop hogging all the rolls – pass 'em this way."

Pulled from his thoughts, Steve obediently passed the basket to Tony, after taking one or two or five. Tony gave him a radiant smile, much too enthusiastic for some bread, but Steve wasn't judging. Bruce made good dinner rolls.

"Thanks, Cap," he said, taking a couple rolls before he passed the basket to Bruce.

"Cappuccino?" he repeated a few moments later when he realized what Tony had called him. He raised his eyebrow at the smaller man next to him, but Tony only shrugged and bit into his roll, giving him a beatific smile.

Steve thought it was kind of beautiful.

* * *

 **Awww.**


	14. Задание выполнено

**You guys, I appreciate you a lot. Your encouragement and your comments mean the WORLD to me and they push me to always continue writing. So thank you so much!**

 **Also, I considered splitting this chapter in half, but I wanted to end it where I did and everyone just kept TALKING and it ended up longer than planned but I'm pretty pleased with the turnout. :)**

 **So, we see the deaths of Tony's parents in a lot more detail this chapter. Potential triggering warning ahead. If you want to skip it, the whole section is in italics.**

 **And there's some substance abuse, where Tony gets drunk and takes a sleeping pill. Take care.**

 **LASTLY, there's a scene in here that has inspired the last couple chapters and the direction I've been heading, the inspiration of which I got from "Truth Behind Masks" by scifigrl47 (chapter 2, to be specific) on Ao3. So a lot of the lines will be similar, if you happen to notice that. It really is a wonderful fic, and I'd highly recommend you go read it. Identity porn and misunderstandings are the best tropes. ;)**

 **Anyway, done with my yapping. On with the chapter!**

* * *

Tony was glad he had a secret floor above his normal workshop, specifically for his plethora of Iron Man things. It was a secret that didn't show up on any kind of blueprints – a last minute addition that he'd hired separate contractors for who had no problem with the stack of NDAs Pepper had handed off to them that would have every single person in their company in nothing short of _prison_ if they broke. He still worked on pieces of the Iron Man armor in his main workshop, of course – after all, everyone knew that he was the engineer behind it all even if he wasn't the pilot – but the extras and the measurements and the fully equipped hospital room up there would show a secret he had no intention of ever revealing. Even the air conditioning and heating and electricity in there was separate from the rest of the building, run by a single arc reactor in the wall. He'd done everything he could to make it his own sanctuary for Iron Man – something akin to the Bat Cave, he snorted to himself.

Because he was interested in keeping this extra floor a secret, he was very open about his main workshop. The walls next to the stairs were made entirely of reinforced glass that he could black out if he needed to, but typically remained clear for everyone to see.

Oh, it still had _some_ protection – Jarvis had to allow people inside, or they had to have a code to get in that simultaneously checked for the fingerprints matching the person whose code it was keyed to. But he stayed transparent most of the time so that no one suspected he was anything except a busy, eccentric genius billionaire inventor.

And it worked, for the most part. Keeping the electrical currents in the vents around the lab, plus the knockout gas and the sonic sounds, it made it so that people (*cough* Clint and Natasha *cough*) thought that when the windows were blackened that Iron Man was out of his suit there, and that he really _did_ use his main lab for the upkeep of Iron Man's armor. And when those windows were blackened, _no one_ could get in even with their emergency codes.

All of this went through his head in a moment when Natasha used her code to come into the lab. He was surprised; she'd never come in here before. Steve had the most, out of all of them, with a total of eleven times in the two weeks since he'd gotten his code. Bruce came in second with three times, while Clint had come in once, for exactly two minutes. Wanda and Natasha hadn't yet ventured down there.

"Widow!" he greeted, somewhat cheerfully, setting down his tools that he'd been using to fix one of Iron Man's gauntlets with. "Are you here to kill me?"

Natasha gave him a dry look. "As if I would give you the warning if I were."

Tony shrugged, conceding the point. "Fair. So if you're _not_ here to kill me, what can I do for you? Please tell me it's upgrades to your Widow's Bites, because I can make _so_ much better than what SHIELD is providing for you."

Natasha tilted her head, considering. "If you're not too busy."

Tony scoffed, waving his hand like he was batting away a fly. "I'm never too busy – don't listen to Pepper."

"If making more Bites won't cut into your sleep, knock yourself out," Natasha decided.

Tony grinned, making plans to cut back on SI business for a couple of hours instead, given the redhead's ultimatum. " _Awesome_."

"That's not why I came down here, though," Natasha continued, and Tony nodded and waved for her to go on. "JARVIS has access to every computer connected to internet, yes?"

Tony shrugged in agreement. "Hypothetically," he remembered to say. It wasn't exactly _legal_ for him to look into the government's files and use their access for his own purposes. But he didn't _snoop_ through their stuff. Much. Mostly he just used it to get in contact with Rhodey. He didn't use it for, like, _nefarious_ purposes.

A ghost of a smile traced across Natasha's lips at his comment, before her expression smoothed out again. "So, he could _hypothetically_ find any person on Earth who needed to be found."

It wasn't exactly a question, but Tony nodded anyway. "Sure. Why? You need to find a celebrity? Don't need JARVIS for that. Most of 'em will come if I call." He leered, so she didn't miss the innuendo in his last statement.

She didn't rise to the bait, though – not even rolling her eyes – but said, "Clint and I have met everyone in our soul bond."

Tony's brow creased with confusion at the non sequitur. "Congratulations?"

Natasha shook her head. "No one else has met him, so far as I have been able to gather. But everyone else is here, and I'd thought – perhaps JARVIS could find him? At least so I can have a chat with him."

Tony began to feel a seed of suspicion in his gut at her wording at and at the intentional vagueness in her explanation.

"If you expect me to even _consider_ finding this guy, I'm gonna need more than that, Romanoff." He stated. "I notice you used the singular when you said you want to talk with him. There a reason you would exclude everyone else?"

"He may not be willing," Natasha explained. "He's an assassin – codenamed 'Winter Soldier'."

"Sounds menacing," Tony remarked, not reacting outwardly to the chill that went up his spine.

"Most people think he's a ghost story," Natasha went on without acknowledging Tony's interruption. "He's been in action since the early fifties – more than a hundred kills credited to him. Girls in the Red Room were told stories about him – he's considered worse than the Bogeyman."

"He'd be dead or nearly dead by now, wouldn't he?"

"The consensus among people who believe in him as that it's name passed down," Natasha explained. "Master to apprentice. Whoever it is now, I met him years ago. Clint, shortly afterward. He doesn't look old. He has a mask covering the bottom half of his face – looks like a muzzle, almost. Wears tactical goggles."

"And you want me to find this master assassin, so you can have a _chat_ with him," Tony said evenly, though his skepticism was clear.

"I don't expect it will be easy," Natasha said blandly. "He's a ghost story for a reason. But he does have a few identifying features that JARVIS should be able to recognize."

"Such as?" Tony prodded, wondering why his heart was beating rapidly with nervousness.

"His left arm has some kind of armor on it," she explained. "It's completely metal, flush against his skin. Looks like it could _be_ his arm for the realism of it. There's a red star painted on the shoulder."

Tony's mouth suddenly went dry. That sounded very familiar. But he'd thought…he hadn't thought that was _real_. He'd had a pretty bad concussion at the time – his memory couldn't be trusted.

He turned to the gauntlet on the table, picking up his tools to hide his suddenly shaking hands.

"And your plan is to…what? Have a chat, convince him to renounce his assassin ways because you're soulmates, and then invite him to live back here?"

"It worked for me," was all Natasha said in response.

"What about everyone else?" Tony prodded, using a thin pair of tweezers to adjust one of the wires in the hand of the gauntlet. "Somehow I don't think _everyone_ will be super excited to welcome another soulmate."

Natasha was quiet a moment, and he could feel her gaze on him, studying him. He studiously did not return her gaze. The gauntlet deserved his full attention, after all.

"Iron Man will come around eventually," she finally said. "And the rest of us are working on it. He can be right in the thick of it all, as we get to know each other."

Tony rolled his eyes slightly at her response and glanced up at her before focusing back on the gauntlet. "And what about Steve?" he pressed. "I don't know if you've noticed, but he's not exactly _excited_ to get to know all of his soulmates."

"Like I said, we're working on it," Natasha said, her even voice thinly covering the annoyance underneath her words.

"Look, Natasha, it's not fair to _anyone_ here," Tony said, barely refraining from snapping and finally looking up at her. "Not the _least_ of all this 'Winter Soldier'. Even if he _is_ jumping at the chance to come and join his soulmates, what would he think, coming into this environment as it is? The only ones who have their shit together are you and Wanda, and you and Clint. Bruce hardly talks to _anyone_ , Steve doesn't even want to deal with this soulmate bond, and the only time anyone can talk with Iron Man is on the comms during battle. It's not exactly a _welcome_ atmosphere for someone coming in from the cold. Who's to say he wouldn't just run off when he doesn't get what he expects?"

"You're right," Natasha said simply, after a brief pause as she considered his words. So surprised by her admission, he didn't say anything as she continued, "It's not fair. I won't leave him in the dark about the state of everyone here. But I can't take that choice away from him, either. What got me was that Clint gave _me_ a choice. He didn't just decide for me whether or not he was good enough. So I'll give the Soldier a choice, too. But I need to find him first."

Tony sighed to himself, knowing when he was beat. He looked away from her, back to his gauntlet sitting on the table, surrounded by various tools. "I'll see what I can do," he agreed, his voice betraying nothing.

"Thank you, Stark," Natasha said, and a moment later, he heard the door beep to signal it had closed behind her, leaving him alone with the haunting memory of ice blue eyes.

He sent JARVIS off on a quick search for a man with a metal arm. What else could he do? He needed to see if his memories were real or if they were faulty. He desperately hoped that he was just imagining the man with the metal arm and eyes so blank it could have been a dead man were it not for his movement, but he had the sinking suspicion that he wasn't.

But Natasha had said that the man wore tactical goggles. How would Tony know that the man he remembered had eyes like that?

* * *

"Sir," JARVIS' soft voice permeated his thoughts hours later, while Tony was uselessly fiddling with the leg boot on the Mark – XXIV? XXV? – he didn't remember. He'd been distracted enough that he'd burnt the side of his neck with a hot piece of metal, and now he was staying away from potentially dangerous tools for a bit. "I have found a match."

"Throw her up, J," Tony said tiredly, sitting up straight and turning to the nearest screen, upon which JARVIS projected his findings.

It didn't seem like much, at first. There was a side partial profile picture of a man – Tony couldn't tell who it was, but he had wavy hair, dark, which fell almost to his shoulders. He was turned slightly like he was in movement when the camera had captured him, and the blurriness of the photo spoke of its age. A bit of light had caught the reflection of the man's left arm – yes, it was definitely metal. It didn't look like armor to Tony, though. It looked like it actually _was_ an arm…though of course he couldn't know for sure without a clearer picture or seeing it in movement. A point of color was visible around the curve of his arm – Tony was pretty sure it was the star that Natasha had mentioned.

There was one more file, and Tony couldn't quite figure out what he was looking at, initially.

"Translate this to English?" he requested the AI. A moment later, bright red words overlaid the Russian behind it.

Even with the translation, Tony still wasn't sure what he was looking at. It seemed very purposefully vague – mentions of "recalibration", which Tony assumed was for the arm, and "failure to adhere". It made Tony wonder how the arm was made. It mentioned the full title "Winter Soldier" only once, which was how JARVIS had found it. It seemed to be some report by a guy named Karpov. He was very put out by the malfunction in his machine. Tony suspected he was the engineer of the arm, but that didn't seem quite right.

Still, it was enough. He knew that arm. He knew that build. He knew exactly who had killed his parents now.

 _How the hell am I supposed to let this guy into my Tower?_ He thought wildly.

"Would you like for me to continue to search for more matches, Sir?" JARVIS questioned.

" _No_ ," Tony choked out, waving his hand in a slicing motion. "No, I – I've seen enough. It's fucking _enough_." He turned to walk away. "Get these out of my sight."

Obediently, the files disappeared from the screen, but Tony didn't notice. He went over to the shelf on one wall, and grabbed the nearest alcohol he could reach.

"Sir…" JARVIS began to protest.

"Not now, J," Tony said harshly, ripping the lid off the bottle. "Not now."

* * *

 _Tony didn't even want to be here. He wanted to stay at school – not because he had friends, but because even being at the boarding school over holiday break with no one to keep you company was better than having to listen to his parents argue nonstop the entire three weeks._

 _He sighed, watching out the back window as the scenery went by and his parents bickered in the front seat. They hadn't come till evening, because there had been meetings all day for Howard. The only reason the both of them had come to pick him up rather than just sending Jarvis was because they were going to some party at eight and they needed to present that united front, to make everyone believe they were the happy, close-knit family they claimed to be. Tony couldn't help the snort that escaped him when he found out, because that was a load of bullshit._

 _Because it was so late, and during the winter season where all the days were shorter, he couldn't really see much out the window except the random bushes close enough to the road to be visible when the car passed. But it was still better trying to distract himself by finding something new than it was to have nothing to capture his attention but his parents' raised voices._

 _"So, Tony, how have you been doing this semester?" Mom said, clearly in an attempt to completely change the subject away from the argument with her husband._

 _"'S alright," he shrugged carelessly. He knew she wasn't really asking, so he didn't care to make his response honest._

 _See, no one liked Tony – not really. Sure, he knew more than most of the teachers, but he'd long since learned not to just give people answers to their homework. That's all they wanted, after all – not to be his friend. And what was the point in doing work for a stranger? Anyone his age…it just always seemed like there was this vast chasm between he and them, thanks to the difference in knowledge._

 _At least he was graduating in May, right before he turned fourteen. He'd been going to the same boarding school since he was eight, and he was ready to move on to broader and greater horizons. MIT had already accepted him – he just needed to graduate high school first. Easy peasy._

 _Until then, he'd suck it up, keep his head down (as much as a Stark was able to, anyway), and power through the school year._

 _"Did you make any new friends this semester?" Mom questioned hopefully. She had always wanted him to do well, to have friends – more than she wanted him to be a genius. But she allowed him to be raised as Howard wished. Sometimes Tony hated her for her easy acquiescence to her husband's demands and expectations. Most of the time he just felt sad._

 _"Not this time, Mom," he sighed, looking out the window again._

 _"Maybe next term, then?" she suggested optimistically. Tony's lips tugged down in the corners._

 _"Or maybe when I'm old enough that a few years of age difference won't matter so much," Tony said shortly. "So, maybe in a couple of decades."_

 _"You don't need **friends** , Tony," Howard spoke up, voice hard as he drove. "You only need allies. Some of your schoolmates now may be assets for Stark Industries in the future – you should not alienate them so soon in your life as you have been doing."_

 _"So, what?" Tony retorted, angry with the demand. "I'm just supposed to lay back and let them all…"_

 _"You don't **let** anyone do anything," Howard interrupted sharply. "Jesus, Tony – grow a damn backbone. Starks are made of iron, and I will **not** have you ruining **my** image, do you understand?" he didn't wait for a response, but he gave Tony a hard look through the rearview mirror. "Be cunning, for once in your life, and don't just act on impulse as you are so wont to do. Let people think they're doing **you** a favor, while you squeeze them dry."_

 _"Howard, he's a **child** – he doesn't need to worry about this," Mom said sharply. Tony sighed to himself, hunching back in his seat. Back to arguing again. He always hated when they argued about him right in front of him, like he wasn't even there._

 _"That's naïve, Maria, and you know it," Howard scolded his wife, not backing down an inch. "You coddle him too much and he needs to realize the responsibility he carries!"_

 _"Oh, I **coddle** him, do I?" Mom shot back. "You expect **too much** of him – always pushing him to do more than he has to, more than he's ready for!"_

 _"And **you** make too many excuses for him!" Howard shouted. "What kind of person do you think has **six** soulmates? I don't fucking know, and no one else does either because they don't exist. He doesn't grow up soon and realize everything that's resting on him, then someone **else** is going to force it and **he** needs to be able to stand up to that!"_

 _"Don't try and make your own **son** another one of your damn science experiments, Howard," Mom hissed furiously. "You've been pushing him since he was born – this has nothing to do with the number of soulmates he has, and you know it! If you hadn't…"_

 _She was cut off as someone on a motorcycle zoomed up next to the car on Tony's side, faster than Tony could speak. He threw something at Mom's window, causing it to shatter, and Howard, so startled by this, jerked the wheel as Mom screamed in surprise and fear…_

 _CRASH._

 _Tony was pretty sure he had passed out for a minute, because when he blinked open his eyes, Howard wasn't in the car anymore. He was crawling on the ground, and through blurred vision, Tony looked at the man who'd been on the motorcycle. He was parked behind the car, walking toward his dad._

 _"No…" he whispered, because he instinctively knew what was going to happen. The man's steps were just a touch too menacing – and Tony was pretty sure he was the only one to see the man throw something into the car._

 _People were always after his dad – after him, too. He'd been kidnapped four times before the age of six, until Howard began to refuse to pay the ransom. Tony had been put in self-defense classes, and he was expected to get himself out if he was kidnapped again. They'd slowed by the time he got older, but he was well used to the lurking threat in every shadow – people after Stark money or brains._

 _This wasn't like that. This was just pure, straight killing._

 _The man grabbed Howard by the hair – vicious, but not intentionally so. Not to cause pain, but because it was easy. The man raised an arm – **shit, is that made of metal?** He wondered, seeing what looked kinda like a red star on the shoulder, but his eyes were too blurred to be able to tell for sure from this distance – and seemed about to let loose with a brutal punch, but then his arm began to lower. Tony thought he was hesitating._

 _His dad said something, and then the man slammed his fist down in Howard's face – once, twice. Tony choked on air with each blow, and he felt like he couldn't breathe completely when Howard just collapsed._

 _"Dad…" he choked out, trying to get air into his lungs._

 _"Howard…" Mom's voice said feebly from the front. Tony turned his head – it lolled in his mom's direction, and he saw she was looking out, blood on her face. "Tony…"_

 _"Mom," he whispered in response, unable to raise his voice. Fire was licking at the windshield – the engine was on fire. He couldn't bring himself to care, much. He was very sleepy – he was pretty sure it was a concussion. His wrist ached too, but that was negligible compared to the pain that ripped through him when the man discarded his dad in the front seat and sauntered around the car to get his hand around his mom's throat._

 _"N…no…" Tony whispered, tears spilling down his cheeks at the sound of Mom's chokes and struggles. His eyes went accusingly, hatefully, to the man at the other end of the arm. He could see most of the man's face – he wasn't even looking at the blond woman in his grip, eyes gazing blankly into the distance._

 _Several moments later, after Mom had completely stilled and gone silent, the man let go, and stepped back from the car, leaving Tony with two dead parents and a heart full of pain. Furiously, he tried to move, impulsively trying to scrabble out of the car to…to do **something**. To hit the man, to scream at him, he didn't know._

 _The man paused where he had begun to walk back behind the car. He turned to look at him – curiously, Tony might have said. He couldn't tell, because his vision was kinda blurry._

 _A moment later, the door beside him swung open, and the man reached out with his right arm – toward his neck. Tony couldn't even muster up the energy to struggle away as the hand grew closer, and he knew with certainty that he was about to be choked to death as his mom had been moments before._

 _Then, the hand stopped, and Tony watched fuzzily as the man tilted his head slightly. He was **really** out of it, and dangerously close to passing out. He forced himself to stay awake though, trying for **something** with that Stark stubbornness Howard both encouraged and scolded him for._

 _Then the man crouched down a bit, bending over so he was inside the car, able to look at Tony better. His eyes were mostly blank, but also curious, and – confused. His eyes, as far as Tony could tell, were an icy blue-grey. His dark hair hung unevenly around his face._

 _Tony hated him._

 _"Y' killed 'em," he mumbled out, trying to keep his accusing gaze focused on the man. The man didn't move at the condemnation, like he wasn't bothered at all. "F'ckin…m'rd'rer…y' killed m' mom…"_

 _That blue-grey gaze only remained locked on him, staring silently. Tony wasn't sure what he was looking for. He had yet to actually meet his eyes though, remaining very consciously away from Tony's brown ones._

 _"Well…" Tony slurred, eyes unfocused, "Y' gonna k'll m' now? What're y' wait'n for?"_

 _The man was motionless for another moment, before he reached out with his flesh hand again, wrapping it loosely around his neck. Tony waited for the squeeze, for the loss of air and the unconsciousness that would lead quickly to death at the hands of this assassin._

 _But it didn't come. The man rubbed his thumb once at the side of Tony's neck, his blue-grey eyes finally focusing right on Tony's, meeting his gaze squarely. "Задание выполнено," he said quietly, and Tony was pretty sure it was Russian, but he hadn't the first clue what it meant._

 _A moment later, the man released him, moving out of the car in one fluid motion and walked away._

 _As Tony finally succumbed to the darkness tugging at the edge of his vision, he heard the motorcycle rumble away down the road._

 _Hours later, when they asked him what he remembered, he told them he couldn't remember anything after they crashed into the tree._

 _It was true. Those blue-grey eyes staring into his were only his imagination, after all._

* * *

Tony woke up feeling zero percent rested, wondering what had woken him up.

Smacking his lips, he recognized how dry his mouth was. It stank of alcohol, too, which explained the headache behind his eyes. Not as bad as a normal hangover was, though – he sat up just fine, if a bit dizzy. He was on his couch – a blanket had been draped over him unevenly, clearly Dummy's attempts at tucking him in.

"J," he said sleepily, rubbing the sand from his eyes. "How long was I out?"

"Approximately three hours and eleven minutes, Sir," JARVIS replied promptly, sounding peeved.

Tony blinked, processing the statement before he could process his own thoughts and move them from his brain to his mouth.

"Shit," he finally said. He blinked again, confused. "That's…that's not long enough."

"No, Sir."

Tony paused. "Why am I awake, then?" he said plaintively.

"It has been thirty-two hours since you last ate or drank anything besides alcohol," JARVIS said, and Tony was confused for far too long, wondering why JARVIS was talking about what he ate. When it clicked, he wondered why he had been so confused.

"Did I take any drugs?" he pondered. He didn't remember anything after finishing the first bottle of whiskey, which hadn't actually been all that full to begin with.

"Not of the recreational variety, no," JARVIS replied, still sounding ticked. "But after downing an exorbitant amount of alcohol, you decided to sleep, but as you could not fall asleep within a minute, you determined to take a sleeping pill, which does not mix well with alcohol nor should be taken on an empty stomach. My attempts at stopping you were met with an order to only interfere if your vitals dropped below acceptable standards. As you were not asleep long enough, they did not."

"That's a lot of words," Tony said finally after a long moment processing the entire explanation.

"Perhaps you should find some food before you go back to sleep," JARVIS suggested, but his tone said that it wasn't really a suggestion.

"Okay," Tony said agreeably. "I'm hungry. And thirsty." He swung his legs off the couch and stood up. He wobbled, and had to grab onto Dummy, who was waiting anxiously beside him, to prevent himself from collapsing to the floor.

"Whoa!" he exclaimed, just managing to steady himself. "That was a close one." His head was spinning, some sort of pleasure moving through his body and making him feel slightly giddy.

"I need water first," he smacked his lips. You wheeled over excitedly, holding out a water bottle that was about half full, presenting it like a prize to his make. Tony took it with a grin and a pat to You's camera arm, twisting the top off and guzzling the entire thing down, suddenly incredibly thirsty.

A moment later, he'd fallen back into the couch with the force of his vomiting, only just barely able to catch the garbage bin sitting beside the couch before making too much of a mess on the floor. It seemed he'd vomited out all of the alcohol still in his stomach and then some before his heaving stopped.

"Guh," he grimaced, smacking his lips again. "Yuck. Need a toothbrush."

He was able to stumble his way over to the sink without too much mishap, grabbing the toothbrush he left there for just these types of occasions. Not that they happened too often. But, often enough to be prepared.

He moaned obscenely in pleasure when the taste of mint hit his tongue, and spent several minutes continuously brushing his teeth before JARVIS called attention to the fact that he'd been brushing his teeth for twelve minutes. Tony removed the toothbrush from his mouth, staring at it in bewilderment for a long moment, before he spit in the sink and rinsed the brush under the tap.

"I'm really stoned," he realized, turning to stumble his way toward the elevator, snagging a shirt hanging on the chair on his way out.

"Indeed, Sir," JARVIS intoned. "After eating, you will have a much better time sleeping."

"Hm," Tony hummed, then asked curiously, "What'm I gonna eat?"

"I believe you will find something to your satisfaction in the refrigerator, Sir."

" _Awesome_ ," Tony said fervently, as the elevator doors opened silently in front of him.

* * *

Clint was making lunch with Natasha and Bruce when Tony came stumbling in, looking completely wrecked. It was strange, because while he didn't know the guy super well, he knew him enough to be on a first name basis with him, and he'd seen him enough times with – with a _face_ on. A mask. And Tony was always carefully put together, very aware of his appearance, whether he was just in the workshop or wandering about with Steve or at a formal event.

This Tony…was not. Put together, that is.

The brunette was wearing a simple tee shirt – representing a band that Clint couldn't quite make out, as most of the graphics had faded away. The shirt was thin enough that the normally barely-there light of his arc reactor was shining much brighter, practically a beacon in his chest. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants, the elastic slung low on his hips and letting his hip bones poke out teasingly. He was barefoot, and his hair was in total disarray. Not artful disarray, but like he'd just climbed out of bed and stumbled in for food. His cheeks were rosy like he'd drunk a couple glasses of red wine, and his pupils seemed dilated, eyes a bit shiny.

The three of them had gone silent when Tony staggered in, but the billionaire didn't even seem to notice as he ambled his way over to the fridge. Clint caught sight of what looked like a hickey on the side of his neck, and immediately everything about the man's attitude made sense. He couldn't help the smirk that crawled across his lips.

"Afternoon, Tony," Bruce was the one to speak first, sounding amused as they observed the brunette.

Tony's eyes flicked lazily over to his fellow scientist, something like a smile or a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Hi," he said, drawing out the word just slightly longer than the single-syllabic word called for as he opened the fridge. He gazed into the fridge, not grabbing anything, before he looked back at Bruce with slight confusion.

"Is it? Afternoon?"

"It's almost one-thirty," Bruce confirmed patiently, amused.

"Huh," Tony said, and looked back into the fridge, reaching in and grabbing some lunch meat and some condiments. He bumped the fridge door closed with his hip, swaying gracefully over to the counter to prepare a sandwich. He set out six slices of bread, putting lettuce and turkey on three of the slices.

"Have a good night, Stark?" Clint finally couldn't help teasing. " _Sleep_ well?"

Tony blinked over at him, and Clint thought he looked adorable with his eyes at half mast like that – younger, more innocent.

"Yeah," he finally said. He squirted some mustard on three slices of bread, saying, "Was good. It was…" He stopped to suck his thumb into his mouth to lick off where some mustard had dripped while closing the cap. Then he realized that he'd not finished what he was saying, and he said, "It was really good."

"Oh, yeah?" Natasha was the one to say, chuckling. "You all done, then?"

Tony blinked at her, and after a long pause where he seemed lost in thought, he said, "No. No, I'm…" he began to slap the pieces of bread together to put the sandwiches together. "…I'm gonna get back to it. I…needed food. Then…gonna keep doing it."

"All those are for you?" Clint couldn't resist pointing out the three sandwiches Tony had stacked into his hands. Tony blinked at him, looking adorably sleepy and confused.

"Yeah," he said finally. "All for me…" He trailed off, wandering off back to the elevator.

"Have fun!" Natasha called back. Tony didn't respond, already gone.

Steve appeared a moment later, brow furrowed with confusion, which didn't abate when he saw the smirks on the others' faces.

"What happened to Tony?" was the first thing he said. "He was really out of it."

Clint chuckled. "Oh, he just got some last night," he said airily. "Something energetic, judging by that sway."

Steve's brow furrowed further at this. "'Got some'?" he repeated, not knowing the terminology. "Got what?"

"Well, he did have a nice hickey there on his neck," Natasha murmured. "Steve, you want a sandwich? Tony left the stuff out."

Steve didn't seem to have heard her last comment, too stuck on the first. His face had reddened a bit, giving him an adorable blush that disappeared into his shirt.

"A – a _hickey_?" he repeated, his voice a squeak, and then he shook his head. "He _didn't_ sleep with someone. That was probably a, a – work accident. He's been in the lab since yesterday. He's probably tired."

"Hm," Natasha hummed, a considering look on her face. "Yeah, he's been in the workshop, with the windows blacked out, and he reappears with sex hair and a hickey."

"Seems an obvious conclusion to me," Clint pitched in.

"He's sleeping with Iron Man," Bruce was the one to say, which – Clint hadn't even considered _who_ it might have been, but that…that made a lot of sense.

Steve's eyes had shot open wide at Bruce's deduction, before he shook his head. "No," he denied. "He would've…said something."

"Maybe," Natasha considered. "But this would explain a lot of things, about Stark's behavior _and_ Iron Man's. If they've been together from the beginning?"

Clint nodded, warming to the idea. "Explains why Stark doesn't claim a soulmate, and why Iron Man doesn't want to be a part of the bond."

Steve let out a noise, barely discernible but still there. Clint glanced over to see a pinched look on his face. The blond clearly didn't want to even consider it.

"And it explains their closeness," Bruce continued to muse. "I mean, more than an employer-employee bond – they are comfortable with each other and clearly talk a lot, because they always know the same things the other one does. That only comes after years of closeness and trust."

"Who d'you think it is?" Natasha pondered. "I'm betting on Rhodes, his best friend. Awfully convenient that they're best friends but the guy is hardly ever _visibly_ around, huh?"

"I think it's Happy – Tony's head of security," Bruce put in. "Happy's awfully loyal. And he's great, but not exactly…qualified. It would explain why Tony keeps him around."

Natasha nodded approvingly. "I like that. Pretend to be bumbling so no one suspects who he is."

"Except for the obvious fact that Happy wouldn't fit in the Iron Man suit," Clint argued.

"Alright, so then who do _you_ think it is?" Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

"I think it's someone down in R&D," he decided. "Just another faceless person who wouldn't stick out, and if he had to suddenly shed the suit while here, no one would question why an SI employee would be in the building. Plus, R&D is the only department he can tolerate spending excess amounts of time with. Would make sense to have his guy in a place it wouldn't be suspicious for him to be in on the regular."

"No," Steve ground out, shaking his head in denial. "Tony's _not_ sleeping with Iron Man. You guys don't have proof, and it's really rude to talk about him like this, especially when he's not here."

Natasha sighed. "Steve, we're trying to make the best of this that we can," she said gently, but still firmly. "Of course we're not any happier than you are that our soulmate is sleeping with someone else, but…" she shook her head. "We just have to be patient. We can't help our curiosity, wanting to know more about him and what's going on, but we're not trying to disrespect anyone here."

Steve shook his head, face screwed up, and Clint suddenly realized what the man must be worried about, and he practically sang for joy.

Although the blond Captain was prickly and standoffish, showing almost no interest in the whole soulmate thing, he was clearly upset at the thought of Iron Man sleeping with Tony. Which meant that Steve _liked_ Iron Man. And he may not recognize it as such at the moment, but if the guy already liked Iron Man…that meant that there was hope that he would loosen up around the rest of them, too. There was hope for Steve yet.

"I'm going for a run," Steve said abruptly, and Clint didn't even mind as the man turned and quickly left. Not after the progress they'd discovered today.

* * *

Steve fiddled with the cell phone in his hand, heaving a deep sigh as he did.

He didn't like the conversation in the kitchen. He couldn't quite place his finger on the exact reason for it until he'd been out running for a good half hour, oxygen filling his lungs and muscles burning as he pushed himself as hard as he could from the get-go.

He was jealous. Not of Tony, but of Iron Man. Because he liked _Tony_ , and _God,_ wasn't that so fucked up? Bucky had been the only one for him for so long, and even his other five soulmates hadn't changed that. He'd very actively avoided his actual soulmates, and instead spent time with their landlord.

Only, Tony was so much more than _just_ their landlord. He was kind, and he watched out for _all_ of the Avengers, always willing to fix or improve their equipment to try and make them safer, more efficient. He was funny, and even though he could act arrogant and narcissistic, he truly cared for people in a way so many people just didn't seem to these days. He was always looking out for other people, putting them before himself. Even extending the hand of friendship to Steve after he'd been so cruel to him before.

It really should have been expected that Steve would begin to fall for him. He was so much like Bucky – sarcastic brunette with an ass that wouldn't quit, and yet so unfailingly kind to the little guy (not that he was so little anymore) – and yet still his own person. Still different enough that it didn't feel like he was replacing his best guy when he went out with Tony.

And he hadn't expected anything to come of it, not really. He wouldn't want to risk the friendship that he'd gained by trying to go after him romantically. He wasn't even sure how Tony felt about soulmates – it was a topic they largely avoided – so he didn't even know what would happen if and when Tony's soulmate came along.

But, even still, with all of this in mind, he couldn't help the hurt he felt when he imagined Tony with Iron Man. Though it wouldn't be _Iron Man_ then – it would be some faceless unknown who trusted Tony and had somehow managed to get the billionaire to trust him back with not only his life but also his heart. That wasn't a level that Steve could ever even _hope_ to achieve, he was sure.

And even if they _were_ together…Steve had considered them to be friends. He'd thought they were, anyway. But if Tony had truly been with Iron Man for _years_ …why hadn't he told him? Even in passing, even mentioning that he was seeing someone. Did Tony not trust him? That had to be it. Really, they hadn't even been friends for very long. Just about a month. So what right did Steve have to be upset? None.

Except that he _was_ upset. And confused. And he just needed…he just needed to escape for a little while. Put some distance between him and everyone else. Clear his head.

 _I'm **not** running away, _he told himself firmly, finding the number he needed in his contact list and pressing the button to call. _I'll be back soon._

"Hi, Director Fury?" he said when the phone picked up on the other end. "I've thought about your offer to train the new STRIKE team in DC. You said it was a six week course? Alright. Yes, sir. I can be there tomorrow."

* * *

 **Задание выполнено - "Mission complete" (As always, this is Google Translate, so someone correct me if I'm wrong...)**

 **I'd meant to put Wanda in that last scene in the kitchen, and realized after the fact that I'd never gotten to it, and then I couldn't find a spot to ease her in naturally, so…we'll pretend she was with Pietro and she's going to find out about all their suspicions later. Yeah. (*ducks head apologetically*)**


	15. Eighteen Days

**Guys, I FINALLY GOT A JOB TODAY! And I'm super excited and happy about it. I'm going to be one of those annoying people calling you to take a survey over the phone haha. And it's close to my apartment, so I can walk, and I'm super happy about that.**

 **Also, wish me luck with school. It's only the third day but I have SO MUCH HOMEWORK. So naturally, I decided to procrastinate by writing this chapter for all of you.**

 **And because of work and school, I will definitely not be updating too often. o.O Sorry...**

 **Here we have a bit of a time jump, because otherwise it would just be another retelling of CATWS taking up another chapter and I didn't feel like putting forth that effort. Maybe one day I'll write a oneshot of this interim time, but for now we're coming to about the end up CATWS because BUCKY'S BACK!**

 **Okay it's like really brief that he's actually in this chapter but there will be more on him later. This chapter we see Wanda talking with Tony, and that's already huge.**

 **I originally intended for the focus of this chapter to be Bucky and I'd title the chapter "The Winter Soldier", but Wanda wasn't happy about being forgotten last chapter and demanded to be heard. *sheepish shrug***

 **Anyway, hope ya like it!**

* * *

It had been a hard eighteen days.

As soon as Tony had realized that Steve had gone to DC without a word, taking Natasha with him for some job at SHIELD, he racked his brain to figure out what he'd done wrong. Because it had to be him, didn't it? He was the only one that Steve talked to, really. And if it had been one of the others, Natasha probably wouldn't have followed, would she?

But try as he might, he couldn't come up with a legitimate reason Steve had left.

It was only six weeks, though, he reminded himself constantly from where he'd shut himself up in the lab. He told JARVIS to only accept phone calls from Rhodey, Pepper, Natasha, and Steve – everyone else could leave a message. And he only put Natasha on there because she was with Steve and might give him information on the guy. Pepper was on there because she would kill him with her stiletto if she discovered she was blocked for longer than a day.

He didn't get calls from DC, though. Steve had gone silent. Natasha wasn't giving him anything. He was left alone in his workshop to tinker with Iron Man's armor and Natasha's updated Widow's Bites.

And then the world exploded.

Not literally. But it might have, if Steve and Natasha and some black guy with a pair of metal wings hadn't stopped it.

Steve had called him, hours before Project INSIGHT was due to launch. Tony shoved aside his fury at SHIELD's secrets and their using his arc reactor technology for such _evil_ and simply focused – with the help of JARVIS – on gathering the information from all of the good guys before it could be dumped online.

And now, Steve and Natasha were returning to the Tower, with flyboy and the fucking _Winter Soldier_ , who had apparently pretended to go along with Hydra before he helped Steve with setting the chips in the helicarriers.

After the data dump, Tony carefully picked through the files on the Winter Soldier. Most of those had been saved, but not all of them. He had discovered the torture and conditioning that the Soldier – _Barnes_ – had gone through. That file he'd found before, about the recalibration and adverse reaction…it wasn't about the arm at all, but about Barnes himself.

He'd spent several minutes retching into a trash can at that discovery.

Instinct told him to keep the worst of the horrors to himself, away from Steve and from the eyes of the world. But the whole world had seen the man with the metal arm who had attacked Captain America in DC. The only way to prove that Barnes had not been the culprit but a victim himself was in releasing some of those files for the world to pick over and prod at.

After that, he couldn't blame the Winter Soldier for his parents' deaths. Oh, it still hurt. But he couldn't put it all on Barnes' shoulders – that wasn't fair. He hesitated to put the kill order for his parents out there for the world to see, but eventually decided to hell with it and let that one slip past, too. If it ever came to a trial for Barnes, that could come in handy.

And he didn't blame Steve for his brusqueness, when he had all but demanded that Bucky be allowed to live with them at the Tower. This was his best friend – their closeness was legendary. They'd grown up together, brothers in all but blood.

At least that's what everyone had thought.

But now Tony knew that the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes, and the Winter Soldier had been his soulmate once upon a time, which meant that he was Steve's soulmate, and suddenly Steve's distance from his other soulmates made a whole lot more sense. He'd been grieving his lover – hadn't wanted to replace him.

And Tony really couldn't blame him. He couldn't really empathize personally with what Steve had gone through with the loss of his love of over a decade, the man who had followed Steve by joining the Howling Commandoes in World War Two, after Steve had followed Barnes into the War with all he could manage to do. But he tried to imagine losing Rhodey, and the pain that swept through him at the mere idea he thought might be comparable to the agony of losing a soulmate he'd known his whole life.

But still…it hurt, honestly. To be discarded so quickly, now that he had his one true love back. Yeah, he'd only really been friends with Steve for about a _month_ before his going AWOL, but…he'd liked it. Being with Steve. He was nice, and there had been no agenda or expectations other than friendship.

He could only dread what would happen when they actually made it back to the Tower.

* * *

"Capsicle!" Tony greeted him as soon as the elevator doors opened onto the communal floor. He felt Bucky tensing by his side for a brief moment before he forced himself to relax. Steve put a hand on Bucky's lower back, trying to reassure him as they walked out of the elevator. He wasn't sure it worked – Bucky didn't even look at him, and his expression was still slightly spooked – but he didn't remove his hand from where it sat.

"Tony," he greeted the billionaire, he thought somewhat placidly, but the slight tightening in the corners of Tony's eyes told him it hadn't been convincing. He examined the man, looking for signs of upset or accusation – mostly for Bucky. He didn't want Bucky to be uncomfortable here – he was already skittish enough. "Thank you for letting Bucky stay."

"Eh, I had extra space," Tony waved off his gratitude like it was nothing, and that – stung, a little. It smacked of the Tony who had known he was Stark – hiding his emotions behind carelessness and bravado. This wasn't the Tony he had become friends with – this was Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

But, he didn't let his feelings show in his expression; Tony was continuing to speak, anyway.

"So, Red October," he addressed Bucky, and Steve wished he understood the reference for that, "You prefer a higher floor, or lower? Lowest residential floor is sixty-two, so it's still pretty high, but you can go as high as ninety. Unless you'd like to share with your bestie – he's on the eighty-sixth floor. Your thoughts?"

Bucky looked startled by the words directed at him, and he glanced at Steve as though for guidance.

"Your choice, Buck," he murmured, rubbing his thumb in gentle movements on his hip almost subconsciously. "You can do whatever you want."

Bucky didn't appear too reassured by this, but fear didn't appear there either, so Steve counted it a win as Bucky glanced back at Tony with a ducked head.

"I'll stay with Steve," he mumbled, almost shyly, which was so at odds with the Bucky that Steve remembered that he almost didn't hear what he had actually said. "If that's alright, Sir."

"Great – I'll have them set up a room for you," Tony said without a pause, eyes watching the brunette with a seriousness that belied the lightness with which he spoke. "And don't call me Sir – Tony is fine."

"You're just trying to make yourself seem younger," Clint said wryly from the doorway on the other side of the room. Steve had only noticed him coming in because he could feel Bucky's muscles stiffen slightly under his hand. He looked past the archer and saw that Wanda had come up behind him.

Tony sniffed at Clint's comment. "Thirty-four is not _old_ ," he insisted. "And you're just thirty-three, birdbrain."

"Still younger than you!" Clint sang.

Tony only rolled his eyes at this, before he pointed suddenly at Sam, who had been watching the goings-on quietly.

"And _you_!" he exclaimed. "I was watching your flying, and you could _really_ use an upgrade. Who made those wings? Hammer? Stone? Doesn't matter. I can do better. You don't need to deal with slow response time or sticking pieces ever again. I should add lasers to them. Do you like lasers? Or would you prefer flame throwers? Where are they? You didn't give them to SHIELD, did you?"

Sam only laughed, not answering the barrage of questions that came his way. "James told me that's what you'd say if you ever found out about the wings," he said teasingly. "Good to finally meet you in person."

Tony's expression morphed into one of utter confusion. "James?" he said blankly. "Who's…" Then his eyes widened with realization. "Wait, _Rhodey_? _How_ do you know my honey bear?"

Sam raised an eyebrow at the endearment, but didn't ask directly. "Uh…he's my soulmate? He _is_ your best friend, right? Shouldn't he have told you? We met a month ago…"

Tony's eyes widened with rage, and he spun on his heel. "JARVIS!" he barked. "Call Rhodey!"

JARVIS didn't reply, but a moment later, James Rhodes' voice came into the common room.

 _"Tony,"_ he greeted dryly. _"I hope you know exactly how much the brass is upset with you right now. And I get to hear all about it, as the liaison for SI."_

"Rhodey," Tony said sweetly, and Steve could hear the steel underneath, "My platypus, my one-and-only…is there anything you want to tell me?"

The other man was quiet for only a moment before he said resignedly, "You met him, didn't you?"

"Yes, Rhodey bear, I _did_!" Tony exclaimed furiously, dropping the act. "And I had to hear about it from the man himself, _a whole month_ after you two met!"

 _"I regret nothing,"_ Rhodes said stoically.

"I thought we had something, platypus," Tony sniffed dramatically, but Steve was pretty sure the theatrics weren't all for show. "But you never tell me about important things any more. I can feel you pulling away, honey bear, and I don't like where this is going. I refuse to sign these divorce papers! Tell him, Wilson."

 _"Sam is there with you?"_ was all Rhodes said, sounding surprised.

"Hey, James," Sam said wryly, looking a bit amused at the back-and-forth.

 _"Sam! What the hell are you doing with Tony?"_

"He's _living_ here now, Rhodey," Tony said snidely, rolling his eyes. Then he brightened. "Hey! Does that mean _you're_ going to come live here too, then? You don't have to go away all the time!"

 _"That's something I'll have to talk with Sam about, Tones,"_ Rhodes said with a sigh. And then, seeming to know what Tony was going to say next, went on, _"But **not** right now, with you."_

Tony pouted at this. "You could've told me, you know. A whole fucking _month_ , Rhodey!"

 _"Well, I was going to wait for two more weeks before I told you, and if you think about it you know exactly why,"_ Rhodes admitted, not budging an inch in his stance.

Tony's pout turned into a thoughtful frown. "This is different," he grumbled, and Steve wondered what part he was missing that suddenly their comments made even less sense than usual.

 _"Sure, Tones,"_ Rhodes said lightly. _"I'll talk with you later, okay? I'm off to go clean up another one of your messes and find a way to blame someone else. Sam, I'll call you later tonight."_

"Bye," Tony dismissed, and JARVIS disconnected the call.

Tony turned an evaluating eye on Sam. "Well, this changes nothing," he said directly. "I still want to work on your wings. Find me when you have the time." Then he turned to Bucky. "Also, I don't know how comfortable you are with the metal arm, but I would _love_ to get a peek under that hood. It looks like you have a couple of servos not firing right – 's why your fingers won't uncurl. If and when you want that fixed, my workshop is open.

"And speaking of the workshop…" he turned to walk away. "I'd best get back down there. Fucking boot repulsor is still giving me issues. Why Iron Man always busts the left foot is beyond me…"

"Tony," Steve tried to say, but Tony didn't look at him, waving at him vaguely as he walked away.

"Places to be, Gramps," he said dismissively. And then he was gone.

Steve didn't go after him.

* * *

Tony had barely begun work on the boot repulsor that was giving him so many issues when he heard the door beep that someone was typing in the code, a moment before the second beep came that the door had opened. He looked up, surprised to see the person come in.

"Wanda," he blurted in surprise. It was the first time she had come into the workshop, though he was pretty sure after Steve and Natasha had left that the woman had considered coming in before. JARVIS had alerted him a couple of times that the witch was walking back and forth near the hallway before she left on the elevator to seek out someone else's company, and he'd supposed that she had been bored, with her twin gone so often now with his soulmates. He'd known that it was inevitable that at some point she would finally venture inside, but he hadn't expected it to be _today_ , of all days.

Not that there was anything particularly special about today. No, two new tenants, one of which was a former WWII-vet-turned-Hydra-assassin and also happened to be soulmates with Captain America – that wasn't a big deal at all. Except that he'd kind of assumed that now that the last member of the soulmate bond was there that everyone would be eager to get to know him. He'd thought he'd have at _least_ three days of solitude before people remembered Tony Stark again.

Wanda entered the workshop like she'd been in there a hundred times before, perfectly familiar and at ease with the location of everything. But he thought he might have caught a bit of trepidation in her eyes before she came forward. Now though, he couldn't detect anything, so he wondered if he might have imagined it.

"What brings you to my humble abode?" Tony threw out, looking back at the boot as he spoke. He was sure it couldn't be anything too serious – she hardly knew him.

"Everyone is busy with Barnes," she said, sitting on one of the stools and picking up a wrench to fiddle with. "Thought you could use some company in the meantime."

Tony gave her an odd look at that before he looked back at the boot, twisting a couple of wires together so they'd intertwine and be easier to place within the metal.

"Well, I could never turn away a beautiful woman," he said airily. "You're probably one of the smarter ones to be down here. Granted, you're only the third one – third woman down here, I mean – but, you know. Only the smart ones are allowed down here."

"Thanks, I think," Wanda laughed a little, twirling the wrench. It took a moment, because Tony was only keeping track of her out the corner of his eye, but then he noticed that she was using her magic to twirl the wrench, the tiniest tendrils of red floating off from it.

"So, how'd you and your brother come by your powers?" he questioned, gesturing toward her as though to remind her of the fact that she was using her powers right then.

"Hydra experimented on us," she said as placidly as though she was talking about the weather. It was said so calmly that it actually took a second for the words to process, and when they did, he paused his movements, shocked at the ready admission.

"You know, you're the first one to ask either of us that," Wanda continued when Tony didn't say anything. "Funny, isn't it? Everyone else wants this soul bond to work with all of us, but we're all so bad at communication that even something as basic as this hasn't even been touched on."

"Well, I'm a bit more removed from it all," Tony said, deciding to take whatever information Wanda shared in stride, and continued on with his work on the boot. "Logic prevails when the heart's not in the way."

Wanda hummed at this, wordlessly agreeing. It was silent for several moments, and in the quiet Wanda used her powers to lift up a few bolts to spin enchantingly around the wrench, like some kind of odd clock.

"How'd you escape them, then?" Tony finally asked.

Wanda snorted indelicately, still moving the tools through their almost hypnotic motions. "You assume we weren't there willingly," she pointed out.

"Well, you clearly changed your mind, at least," Tony pointed out, shoving a screw between his teeth to hold while he messed with the mechanics in the armor. "Hence, the need to escape. I don't think Hydra hands out retirement plans."

"It wasn't too hard," Wanda said vaguely. "You don't know all of my powers."

"That's fair," Tony admitted, setting the twisted wires in place along the seam. "So, why'd you _join_ Hydra, then? And what made you change your mind about it?"

Wanda was quiet for long enough that Tony thought she wasn't going to answer. Finally, just when he was about to ask another question to try and keep conversation going, she spoke.

"I wanted revenge," she said distantly. "We both did. And Hydra offered power – power through drugs and experiments. It was painful, but we felt it was worth it. With this power, we would get revenge on the man whom we blamed for our parents' deaths. We are still working to forgive him…but it does get easier every day."

"Why are you trying to forgive him?" Tony questioned, pulling the screw from his mouth and going to put it in the boot. Hopefully that would get the repulsor working again, because if not he was going to have to dig around a lot more for the source of the problem. "What made you want to?"

Wanda was quiet for a moment, before she said, "We discovered that the man we blamed for our parents' deaths was one of my soulmates. It wasn't possible to hate him so much after that."

Tony stilled. "Iron Man killed your parents?" he repeated, trying to figure out what she was talking about, exactly. Maybe they'd been some kind of collateral damage? Or someone had attacked _because_ of Iron Man? Or maybe it was an Iron Man look-alike?

"Terrorists killed our parents," Wanda corrected, watching him carefully. He noticed that she had set down the wrench and bolts at some point, though he couldn't think of when it had happened. "It was a civil war in Sokovia. Missiles hit our house – our parents died instantly. Pietro and I hid under the bed, watching as another missile fell from the sky, sat right in front of us for two days while we waited for it to go off. It didn't – it was a dud. But we knew who made the weapons – _Stark Industries_ was emblazoned on the side."

Tony's head shot up to look at her – he couldn't help the immediate reaction of shock. There was no judgement on her face, only seriousness, but still he couldn't help the shame that swept through him.

"I killed – _my_ weapons…" he choked, caught between horror and dread.

"They were your weapons," Wanda agreed, tilting her head consideringly. "And yes, there's a bit of resentment for that. But it decreases daily, you know?"

"Why…" Tony stammered for words, feeling very out of depth. " _Why_ would you even think to forgive…"

"One of my powers that I haven't mentioned…" Wanda explained, crossing one of her legs over the other, "Should I choose, I can see into someone's mind. And your thoughts, what you think about yourself…" she shrugged a bit, looking a bit uncomfortable for the first time since coming into the workshop. "I haven't gone into your mind since the day I met you," she told him. "But I _can_ pick up emotions with a lot less control. And I know how hard you are on yourself – about _everything_. Knowing what kind of person you are, I know that had you known, you would never have allowed what happened in my home country to occur. What happened in Sokovia was no more your fault than it was mine.

"Also," she went on, "It only proves to me exactly what kind of person you are when I tell you all of this, and you focus on the fact that your weapons killed my parents rather than the revelation that I know you and Iron Man are the same person."

Tony paled further as this was pointed out. "Shit," he said. It was true – he'd been so worried about Wanda that he hadn't even thought about and truly realized all of the implications of her explanation. And that she'd apparently known all of this longer than he'd known her – and Pietro too, no doubt.

"I'm not going to tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about," Wanda said. "Neither will Pietro. And yes, that includes telling anyone on the team," she said just as Tony was indeed about to ask that. He gave her a suspicious look, causing her to roll her eyes. "I did not have to read your mind to know that's what you were going to ask," she chided. "I don't know how no one else has figured you out already – you wear your heart on your sleeve, I believe is the American phrase."

"Thank you," Tony said quietly. "And for what it's worth, I _am_ sorry for the part I played in your parents' deaths."

Wanda's eyes became misty for a moment. "Thank you," she said, and with a blink, any trace of tears was gone.

"I don't tell you all of this so that you can feel guilty about it," she told him. "I've forgiven you already. It will take some more time before I can be fully comfortable, because it has been years of resentment, but it will come."

"Why bother trying?" Tony scoffed. "I'm never going to be a part of the bond like everyone else is. You don't have to waste your time with me." He looked back down at his work, unable to look at her any longer – the guilt was too strong.

Wanda sighed, rising to her feet. "You are _not_ a waste of time, Tony. I know what you think of yourself, but no one else thinks that of you. No one who _matters_ , anyway." She leaned down, pressing a brief kiss to Tony's temple. Tony was so startled by this affection that he let it happen.

"We'll prove it to you," she promised, and with those parting words, she left the shop.

Tony stared after her for a long time.

* * *

 **See? I was nice - the cliffhanger isn't even really a cliffhanger. More like...a stumble at the edge of the cliff that kind of makes your heart race for a minute before you go with relief back to the trail.**

 **That analogy got away from me.**

 **Anyway.**


End file.
